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Title: The model prayer
A series of expositions on "The Lord's Prayer"
Author: J. D. Jones
Release Date: June 9, 2023 [eBook #70953]
Language: English
Credits: Juliet Sutherland, David King, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MODEL PRAYER ***
The Model Prayer
THE MODEL PRAYER
A SERIES OF EXPOSITIONS ON
“THE LORD’S PRAYER”
BY
J. D. JONES, M.A., B.D.
AUTHOR OF “THINGS MOST SURELY BELIEVED,” “THE GOSPEL OF GRACE,” ETC.
_THIRD EDITION_
LONDON
JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET, E.C.
PREFATORY NOTE
The Expositions in this volume were originally given as Sunday morning
lectures. They are printed in deference to the wishes of members of my
congregation, who, finding them helpful when first delivered, desire to
possess them in more permanent form. They do not lay claim to any
originality. I have derived help from many quarters, especially from the
expositions of the Lord’s Prayer written by Dr. Dods and Dr. Stanford
respectively. My thanks are also due to my friend Mr. E. Carr for many
valuable suggestions, and for kindly undertaking to see this little
volume through the press.
J. D. J.
_Feb., 1899._
CONTENTS
I.—The Disciples’ Request 9
II.—“Our Father” 25
III.—“Hallowed be Thy Name” 44
IV.—The Second Petition 62
V.—The Third Petition 82
VI.—“Daily Bread” 100
VII.—“Forgiveness” 117
VIII.—“Temptation” 137
IX.—The Model Prayer 157
I
The Disciples’ Request.
“And it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, that
when He ceased, one of His disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us
to pray, even as John also taught his disciples.”—LUKE xi. 1.
It is my purpose, God willing, to give at intervals, on Sabbath
mornings, a series of expositions of that prayer which our Lord taught
His disciples to pray, which, because of its beauty, its spirituality,
its broad, loving charity, has well deserved the names “Epitome of the
Gospels” and “Pearl of Prayers.” But before I address myself to the
consideration of the prayer itself, I would like to clear the ground a
little—to explain its setting—to consider the circumstances that called
it forth, so that we may be able to appreciate and understand it the
better.
This prayer—the Lord’s prayer as we commonly call it, though I often
think it might be more appropriately called “The Disciples’ Prayer”—is a
prayer we learned at our mother’s knee; it is hallowed for many of us by
the fact that those who taught it to us at the first have exchanged
prayer for praise: earth for heaven. Their lips have been silent for
long years, but the prayer they taught us in our childhood, we repeat
morning and evening still! Ah! how many times we have repeated it! From
the very dawn of life this has been our prayer! We repeated it as
children! We are repeating it to-day, as grown up men! Some of us are
repeating it as old men! This prayer is one of the dear familiar things
of life. But there is a danger in our very familiarity with this
beautiful prayer. The peril is that by using it so often, it may become
to us a mere form of words; the danger is that when we repeat it, we may
do so mechanically—that we may say the Lord’s Prayer _without praying_.
“Familiarity breeds contempt,” we say. People who live in the Alps think
nothing of the splendid scenery that we English people go hundreds of
miles to see. The dwellers in inland towns long for the time to come
which will allow them to spend a brief holiday by the sea. They are
fascinated, spell-bound by the changeful, mysterious, beautiful ocean.
There are on the other hand, those of us who live in towns like this,
who allow weeks and months to pass by without ever visiting the shore.
There is ever this danger, that through our familiarity with them, the
beautiful things around us should lose their beauty, and appear
common-place in our eyes. That is the danger we are in with regard to
this “Pearl of Prayers.” It is one of the familiar things of life, and
our very familiarity with it may have dulled our sense of its beauty.
Frequent usage may have dimmed our perception of its sweet simplicity,
and its soaring spirituality. There is the danger of its becoming on our
lips a mere form of words. There is the danger of its becoming, instead
of a real, throbbing, living prayer, a cold, heartless, formal
utterance.
The next best thing to saying a new thing, is to say an old thing in a
new way. Originality consists not so much in discovering new truth, as
in making old truth real and vital. The painter does not invent the
beauty of nature which he depicts on his canvas, he simply brings it out
and makes it visible. “I never see the kind of things you paint in your
pictures,” said a lady one day to Turner, the great artist. “Don’t you
wish you did, madam?” was the painter’s reply, The fault was in the
lady’s vision. The artist saw beauties in nature which were missed and
unheeded by the crowd, and painted them for us on his glowing canvases.
The preacher sees wonders and glories in old and familiar things—glories
missed or unheeded perhaps by those who have less time to read and
ponder this grand old book. It is his business to bring them out, to
show to his people the peerless beauty there is even in the most common
and familiar things. Buttercups and daisies are common little flowers.
They cover our fields. They carpet our meadows. We cannot take a walk in
the fields in summer without treading hundreds of them under foot. They
are so cheap and common that no one ever thinks of making a posy of
daisies, unless it be our children, and they often enough fling the
little flowers away before they reach their homes. Yet there is beauty
in the daisy, and a glory in the buttercup. It is only familiarity that
has made us blind. We should think them beautiful perhaps if they were
as rare as orchids. And even as it is, we need only listen to a lover of
flowers as he describes to us the delicacy and beauty of the daisy and
the buttercup, to realise that even these—the commonest flowers that
bloom—reveal something of the glory of God. Probably there is no form of
words so absolutely and universally familiar as the Lord’s Prayer. I
would like, if I can, to reveal to you some of its wonder, and beauty,
and glory. There are, in this old familiar prayer, heights we have never
scaled, depths we have never sounded. I want, if I can, to help you to
realise its meaning, to feel its power, to grasp the sweep of its
demands, so that this—the most familiar of all prayers—may be on our
lips, fresh, real, vital; so that we may pray, not with the lips only,
but with the understanding also, so that when we use these sacred words,
whether it be in public or in private, we may not simply repeat the
Lord’s Prayer, but really and truly _pray_. To bring out the full
meaning of this familiar prayer, to illustrate its truths, to point out
the demands it makes—that is the aim I have set before myself in this
series of expositions which I purpose to deliver.
I would first of all call your attention to the circumstances of the
origin of this prayer. My text sets these forth. Jesus Christ had been
praying. He was a man of prayer. His favourite temple was the mountain
top. Away from the noise and bustle of the town, in the solitude of the
mountain summit, in the solemn hush and silence of the night, Jesus
Christ prayed. No one can talk much with God without bearing about with
him visible results of that high fellowship. Moses, after he had been on
the mount with God, came down with a countenance that had caught and
retained some of the divine glory. His face shone. John G. Paton, the
heroic missionary, tells in his autobiography how his saintly father
would withdraw every day to talk with God, and as children he and his
brother used to notice with wonder and awe the beautiful light upon
their father’s face when he came forth from that interview. Do not think
me fanciful when I say that I believe that the Master’s face in the
morning used to proclaim plainly in what sacred communion He had been
spending the night. The halo of the old painters may be fancy, but I am
sure that there would be a radiance about the Saviour’s face, an aspect
of such unruffled serenity and calm upon His countenance, as would
proclaim to all that Jesus had been spending the night in holy
fellowship with God. There were many things to try our Lord in life—the
malignant hatred of the Pharisees, the persistent blundering of the
disciples; and often when Jesus left the mountain He was tired, worn,
weary, but after His night of prayer Jesus always came down from the
mountain peaceful, calm and strong. And I cannot help thinking that His
disciples must often have noticed that expression of calm and peace on
their Master’s face after His nights of prayer. It quickened within them
the desire to pray as their Master prayed, that they too might enjoy the
like peace and strength. And that leads me to remark in passing that
people are to be convinced of the supreme value of prayer—not by tracts
about prayer, not by eloquent and clever sermons which profess to
explain away all the difficulties connected with prayer, _but by seeing
in us the effects of prayer_. When they see us calm, happy, and strong
in the midst of the difficulties and worries and cares of life, they
will want to know the secret, and so they too will be led to pray. Was
it not so with these disciples? Jesus had gone apart to pray. And when
He ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, “Lord, teach us to pray,
even as John also taught his disciples.” They wanted to be in command of
the secret of peace. They wanted to be in possession of the key to God’s
storehouse of power. “Teach us to pray.” And it was in answer to that
request that Jesus gave to them the “Pearl of Prayers.”
Now, looking at this request of the disciples for a moment, will you
notice that it is:
I. _A Confession of Need._ “Teach us to pray.” We ask the question
sometimes, “Why do men pray?” Why do men pray! We might just as well
ask, “Why does the nightingale sing? Why does the eagle soar into the
boundless blue?” The nightingale sings because it was made to sing; the
eagle soars away because its pinions were made for flight, and man prays
because he was made for prayer. “Teach us to pray.” That is just the cry
of men who must have their instincts satisfied. Man was made to pray.
This is the cry that gives expression to the necessity of his nature.
“Lord, teach us to pray.” Let me remind you that this is not a need
which Christianity has created. Oh, no! the need is in the very make and
constitution of a man. Christ only satisfied the need. Prayer is as old
as man himself. The first man is far removed from us; in outward
circumstances we are utterly unlike him, but we are like him in this
respect, in our need of prayer. Society to-day is very different from
the primitive simplicity of society in the time of the patriarchs; but
we are like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in this respect—we all pray. The
Bible is a book of prayers. It is the great prayer-book of the world.
All the prayers in it are not on the same spiritual level. In many you
will find much that is mistaken. But there they are—the prayers of
Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon, Elijah, Hezekiah—all bearing
witness to the same need, the same instinct. And I will not confine what
I am saying to the men who are mentioned in the Bible. This sense of
need is universal. God made man for Himself, and wherever you find man
you find his heart and flesh cry out for the living God. The African who
worships his fetish, the Hindoo who prostrates himself before his idol,
even those poor, benighted people who do their praying by machinery—all
these by their acts bear witness to the universal need. Indeed, it is
this sense of need that makes the wide world one. When an infant is in
need of anything it cries, and the cry of the little one is its prayer.
When we men are in need of anything we _pray_; we may pray in a hundred
different ways; we may utter no spoken word, but pray we must. In this
respect, men the whole world over are the same. North and south, east
and west, whereever you find man, you find him with this instinct for
God, under this necessity to pray. It was because these twelve disciples
felt that necessity that they made this request eighteen hundred years
ago to the Man who was best able to answer it, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
II. This request of the disciples is _a confession of ignorance_. “Teach
us to pray,” said the disciples. Prayer was a necessity to them. But
_how_ were they to pray? What were they to _pray for_? These disciples
felt that there might be a right and a wrong way of praying; that there
might be a right and a wrong in the things prayed for. And they judged
rightly. Prayer is the key to the treasure house of God, but it will lie
useless in man’s hand until he is shown how to use it. So here comes the
Confession of Ignorance, “Lord, teach us to pray.” “We know not how, nor
what to pray for—Thou must show.”
“Teach us to pray!” Teach us _how_! for there is a right and wrong of
praying. Man _must_ pray—he cannot help himself. But how he blunders in
his attempts at prayer sometimes. Look at the Hindoo cutting and maiming
himself! Look at the Mongol with his praying machine! Ah, yes, man needs
to be taught _how_ to pray. I think the disciples wanted to know what I
may call without irreverence the “etiquette” of prayer. “Wherewithal
shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the High God?” that
was their difficulty. They knew not how they were to enter into the
presence of the great King. If a man wishes to be presented to the King,
he must obey all the formalities of Court etiquette, and to many that
seems rather a formidable task. Perhaps these disciples thought there
were equal difficulties in the way of approach to the throne of the
Heavenly grace. They wanted to know the etiquette of God’s court. “Teach
us to pray. We know not how.” Do we need an intermediary at the throne?
Do we need to be introduced to Him that sits thereon? By what name shall
we address Him? “Lord, teach us to pray. We know not _how_.” And here
Jesus instructs their ignorance. “You need no intermediary, go boldly to
that Throne yourselves; you need no introduction to Him that sits
thereon—He knows you, calls you by your name; address Him not as King,
Judge, Lord—call Him Father.” It was in answer to their confession of
ignorance that Jesus taught His disciples _how_ to pray.
But further, these disciples knew not what to pray _for_. They did not
know what they were to ask for in their petitions! Nor do we! We are
“the sons of ignorance and night.” We do not know what is best for us! I
often think that if God wished to be unkind to us, He has only to answer
our prayers; for we ask Him for things that can only do us harm. The
little child often begs for things that look nice, or are pleasant to
the taste, but the mother, who knows the harm that would result if these
things were given says “No.” We are like little children in our
ignorance, and have often asked our Heavenly Father for things that
would only injure us. We have all of us to make this confession of
ignorance. We have all of us to acknowledge “We know not what to pray
for.” We all need to go to Jesus with this request, “Lord, teach us to
pray.” And He will teach us. He will tell us what to pray for. He will
tell us what _He_ prayed for. He will tell us how He told out to His
Father all His desires, but ended every prayer with these words,
“Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done,” and He will give us the
assurance that whatsoever we ask of the Father in His name after the
Spirit of His prayers, the Father will give unto us.
III. This request of the disciples is a confession that _the old prayers
are no longer good enough_. “Lord, teach us to pray,” they said. Had,
then, these disciples never prayed before? Yes, many a time, every day
of their lives, and probably several times each day. I imagine that
before Jesus called the twelve, they had been what the world would call
“religious men.” In fact, we need not imagine it, we know it. Several of
them had been disciples of John the Baptist before they became disciples
of Jesus. The Jews were, we are told, particularly conscientious in the
matter of prayer. Three times a day they withdrew for devotion. And
these disciples were good Jews, strict Jews, punctilious in their regard
for all points of ritual. We are justified, therefore, in saying that
the disciples all through their lives had been attentive to the duty of
prayer. What, then, is the explanation of this request “Lord teach us to
pray?” Well, the explanation is simply this: _the old prayers no longer
satisfied them_; even the prayers John the Baptist had taught them
seemed strangely deficient or inappropriate. After living with Jesus,
after hearing Him preach, after listening to His words about God, the
old stereotyped prayers seemed to lose all their beauty and power. The
disciples felt they could not pray them any longer. They had received
from Jesus a new revelation of God, and this new revelation of God
created the need for a new prayer. There is a familiar ballad the first
line of which runs, “I cannot sing the old songs.” Some change has taken
place in the singer’s feelings which makes the old song inappropriate,
impossible. It was so with these disciples. They could not pray the old
prayers, because their hearts were changed. We all know something of
this kind of feeling. Sometimes I look back over old sermons, and very
often I have to say to myself, “I could not preach that again.” God has
been teaching me during the years of my ministry, and leading me into a
fuller knowledge of the truth. In sermons, as in wellnigh everything
else, “_Time makes ancient good uncouth_.” It was so with the twelve.
They had been to school to Christ; from their great Master they had
learned many a new and glorious lesson about God, and the result of
their new knowledge of God, their larger, grander conceptions of His
character, was the absolute necessity for a new prayer. They had
outgrown the old ones in which they had been brought up. They no longer
expressed their feelings or satisfied their needs. You have an
illustration of what I am trying to point out in the history of Paul. He
was a prominent man in religious circles before he became a Christian.
He was scrupulous in his observance of religious duties. After the
straitest sect he lived a Pharisee, and if the Pharisees were
punctilious about one thing more than another, it was their prayers. But
yet, in the account of his conversion, Scripture, after describing Saul
as alone and blind in the house in the street called Strait, adds this
remark, as if recording a new fact in Saul’s history, “Behold he
prayeth.” Saul had said his prayers thousands of times before, but now,
for the first time, he was praying the new prayer, which a sense of his
own sin and the gentleness of God had made necessary. Oh, yes, when
religion is a formality then a prayer which is also a formality will
suffice. But once we see the love of God, once we feel our own
unworthiness, we shall find the old formal prayers will no longer
suffice. We shall need a new prayer then, and like these disciples we
shall come to Christ with the request, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
Notice what the disciple adds, “As John also taught his disciples.”
Christ might imitate John in the act of teaching, but in the prayer
taught Jesus was no imitator. Here Jesus was grandly, supremely
original. This was a new prayer He gave. John could not have given it.
No _man_, however saintly and good, could have given it. It surpasses
the best efforts of man as the sunlight surpasses the starlight. No one
but the Son, who lay in the bosom of the Father; no one but the Son, who
had intimate knowledge of the very heart of God, could have taught this
prayer, for it opens with a New Name for God—the name Father—and no man
knoweth the Father but the Son.
This short but perfect prayer is the Master’s answer to the request of
His disciples. They say that prayer is never answered! This “Pearl of
Prayers” is the best refutation of that statement. It was given in
answer to prayer. “Lord, teach us to pray,” said the disciple, and the
answer to his request was this prayer, which has met the needs and
expressed the desires of God’s people throughout all generations. And so
this prayer itself becomes the best proof of the truth proclaimed in our
hymn,
Beyond our utmost wants
His love and power can bless,
To praying souls He always grants
More than they can express.
II
“Our Father”
“After this manner therefore pray ye, Our Father which art in
heaven.”—MATT. vi. 9.
“When ye pray, say Father.”—LUKE xi. 2.
I said last Sunday morning that in the prayer He taught, Jesus was
grandly, supremely original. That originality appears in most striking
fashion in the invocation with which the prayer opens. The prayer Jesus
taught His disciples to pray begins with a new name for God, “When ye
pray, say _Father_.”
In the Old Testament God is very seldom spoken of as Father, and when
the name _is_ used, it is always with reference to the _nation_ of
Israel and not to individuals—that is to say, the name “Father,” the few
times it occurs in the Old Testament, stands for a _national_ not a
_personal_ relationship. The Old Testament has many names for God—names
that tell of His might, His power, His majesty. It speaks of Him as
Jehovah; it speaks of Him as the great “I am”; it speaks of Him as
“King” and “Lord”—but from Genesis to Malachi you will not find a single
instance of an individual speaking of God as “Father.” Moses did not
dare to use this name. David, the sweet singer of Israel, missed this
note of tenderness from his songs. Isaiah, in the sweep of his passion
and genius, never took this name into his lips. It was left to Jesus
Christ to tell us God’s best and truest name. It was left to Him to say,
“When ye pray, say Father.”
I suppose no one can pass from the Old Testament to the New without
being conscious of a change of atmosphere. Between the books there is a
difference of theological climate. It is the difference between
starlight, clear but cold, and the warm and gracious sunlight; it is the
difference between law and gospel; it is the difference between debt and
grace; it is the difference between fear and love; it is the difference
between servitude and sonship; it is the difference between Sinai and
Calvary. And the whole of this vast difference is made by this word
“Father.” That name is written large upon every page of the New
Testament, and that new name has brought with it a new joy and gladness
into the world.
This name “Father” is a new name. It is a name _no one but Jesus could
have revealed to men_. We could never have known God the Father save
through the Incarnate Son. Men only saw God _from the outside_. They
only judged Him by His works. They were impressed by His greatness, His
wisdom, His power, as revealed to them in the wonders of earth and sea
and sky, and they named Him accordingly. But men felt that, after all,
wisdom and power and might were only _parts_ of God’s ways; they felt
there was a secret about God which they had not been told, and they had
to confess that, strain as they would, there were clouds and thick
darkness about Him through which no eye could pierce. But here we get a
view of God, if I may so speak, _from the inside_. Here you have God’s
heart laid bare. Here you have light thrown upon the inmost nature of
God. The secret hidden from prophet and psalmist and seer is here
declared to the world in this name “Father.” Who could have given God
this name? Who could have discovered this grand secret? Who could have
thrown this light upon the Divine nature? Only Jesus—only the Son who
from eternity had lain in the bosom of the Father. The knowledge of God,
_the Father_, is only to be gained through the Incarnate Son. “No man
knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son shall
reveal Him.” And it seems to me that one of the chief ends for which
Christ came to earth was just to tell us this new name, and so to bring
sunshine into our souls and hope into our lives. In Bethlehem, in
Nazareth, in Galilee, in the garden of Gethsemane, on the Cross of
Calvary, Jesus was spelling out for us this new name, revealing to us
that God is more than wisdom, more than power, more than justice; that
God above and beyond everything else is Love. So the very opening phrase
of this “Pearl of Prayers” brings us the best news ever whispered into
the ears of men. It tells us that love is at the heart of all things. It
tells us that God is our Father and we are His children.
Is God Father to everybody? Yes, to everybody. He is Father to the
humblest, the poorest, the most degraded. God said, “Let us make man in
our likeness,” and in the image of God created He him. All men belong to
God’s family, and upon all some trace of the family likeness is to be
seen. The old Greek poet, whose words Paul quoted in his memorable
speech at Athens, had a glimpse of this truth when he wrote, “We also
are his offspring.” Yes, God is the _Father_ of all men! That is the
truth that has been rediscovered within the last half century, the truth
of the Universal Fatherhood of God, and a blessed and glorious truth it
is. That many men have forgotten God and rebelled against Him does not
affect the reality of His Fatherhood. Absalom turned out a wayward,
disobedient son. He brought trouble, shame, and distress upon his father
David. But the son’s wickedness could not destroy the father’s love.
When news came that Absalom was dead, David wept long and sore, and the
agony of his broken heart found expression in that pathetic cry, “O my
son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom; would God I had died for thee, O
Absalom, my son, my son.” And you can parallel that story of David and
Absalom from modern life. I read of a young man who had sunk into a life
of excess and sin and shame. He brought disgrace upon all connected with
him, and one by one men turned their backs upon him. One only clung to
him—his poor old father. The one who had suffered most at his hand was
the one who continued to bear with him. “Why don’t you turn him out?”
said his friends to the long-suffering old man. “I cannot,” replied he;
“I am his father.” Those are hints, suggestions of the truth about God.
God is the Father of men, and though men sin, the Father still loves.
That is what Jesus would teach us in that most precious of all the
Parables—the Parable of the Prodigal Son. God is Father not only to the
obedient son, but He is Father also to the son who has strayed into the
far country and is wasting his substance there with riotous living. The
Father’s heart yearns for that absent and wayward child; and when that
son returns in his rags and with penitent heart, it is the dear word
“Father” that leaps to the prodigal’s lips, and it is with the word
“Son” that the father welcomes him home again. Yes, God is the Father of
_all_. His love embraces _all_—the lost, the ruined, the undone. His
family is co-extensive with the race. But let me go on to
say—paradoxical as it may sound—that though God is the Father of all
men, _all men are not sons_. Wendt, the great German scholar, puts it in
this way, “God always is the loving Father of all men; nevertheless, men
must _become_ sons of the Heavenly Father by attaining His spirit of
gratuitous, forgiving love.” That is the Bible teaching I myself firmly
believe. This old book proclaims the Fatherhood of God, and yet talks
about men _becoming_ God’s sons. It talks about _receiving_ the spirit
of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The right to become children
of God, it says, is given to those who receive Christ and believe in His
name. In a word, while God _is the_ Father of _all_, men become His sons
only through Jesus Christ. _Possible_ sons all men are; but sonship
becomes actual and real only in Jesus Christ. It is those who are in the
home, who experience the father’s tenderness and care, who know what
sonship means. The son who has wilfully left home, who has taken his
life into his own hands, who has wandered into the far country, he
cannot know what a father’s sympathy and love mean. He has deprived
himself of the privileges of sonship. It is only the child who has
remained at home who is obedient to the father’s commands—it is only he
who can really be called a son at all. He alone knows the blessings of
sonship. He alone knows the father’s affection and love. Christ came
into the world to show us the Father, to seek lost children and bring
them back again home. Those who receive Him into their hearts receive
the spirit of adoption. They know what sonship means. They speak the
name “Father” with a new accent. It becomes to them invested with a
richer and fuller meaning. God is the Father of all men. Yes, but
specially of them that believe.
Now this new name, “Father,” Christ places at the very commencement of
the model prayer. _This name is to be the very basis of our prayer._ To
pray aright, certain things are required in him who prays. The Psalmist
asked himself this question one day, “Who shall ascend into the hill of
the Lord and who shall stand in His holy place?” Who has the right to
worship God and pray to Him? That is the Psalmist’s question translated
into present day speech. And he proceeds to answer the question he
himself asks. And this is the answer he gives, “Who has the right to
worship and pray? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath
not lifted up his soul unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully.” But the
Psalmist’s answer is one of blank despair. For who is there whose hands
are clean? Who is there whose heart is pure? Where is the man who has
not lifted up his soul unto vanity? Brethren, when we look upon
ourselves what do we see but sin! SIN! SIN! and the cry that breaks from
our lips is the terrible cry of the leper of old—Unclean, unclean. If we
have to wait till our hands are clean and our hearts pure we shall
_never, never_ ascend unto the hill of the Lord or stand in His holy
place. But thank God there are no impossible conditions of that kind to
be fulfilled before you and I can pray. What right have I, sinful man,
to pray? What warrant have I for coming boldly to the throne of grace?
Well, brethren, I have no right but that which this name gives. I have
no warrant save that which the name “Father” supplies. That is my
right—not that I have clean hands or a pure heart, but that I am a son,
and He, the Almighty God, is _my Father_. I have read a story somewhere
which says that when one of the Roman Emperors was entering Rome in
triumph, a little child darted through the ranks of the soldiers who
lined the road and made for the gorgeous car in which the Emperor was
seated. Some of the soldiers tried to restrain the little one and said
to him, “It is the Emperor.” “_Your_ Emperor,” said the little one, “but
_my_ father.” That was the little child’s right to sit even in the
triumphal car. And so some would say, “What right have you, a poor
sinner, to approach the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, before whom
Cherubim and Seraphim veil their faces with their wings and continually
do cry?” What right? Well, the right this word gives. Lord of the
Universe? Yes. Maker of the worlds? Yes. King of Kings? Yes. But _my
Father_. Who shall dare keep child and parent apart? When ye pray, say
“Father,” said our Lord. Let us preface every prayer with that blessed
word. It is our claim upon God. No prayer can be too bold; no petition
can appear presumptuous when we have commenced by saying “Father.”
But this word not only supplies our _warrant for prayer_, it also
suggests to us the _spirit in which our prayers must be_ offered. We
must pray in the spirit of filial trust, in the spirit of _childlike
confidence_. “He that cometh to God,” says the Apostle, “must believe
that HE IS.” We must believe first of all in the _reality_ of God. To
many God is a name and nothing more. The world to them would be no
emptier than it is if there were no God at all. We must first of all
believe that God is. But that is not all. The Mongol, the Hindoo, the
African savage believe that God is; but no one would say that their
devotions illustrate the true spirit of prayer. No: we must not only
believe that God is, we must also believe He is a REWARDER. We must
believe He is eager to bless. Some would have you believe that God is
the helpless creature of His own laws, bound and held captive by them,
and therefore unable to listen or to answer the cry of men—like one of
those great stone impassive deities of Egypt, that sit there with
staring eyes, and hands on knees, the very picture of impotence and
helplessness. If God were no more than that, prayer would be a mockery,
a delusion, a sham. But the God we are asked to believe in is a
REWARDER—a FATHER more eager to bless us than any earthly parent is to
answer the request of his child. And Christ puts this word in the very
front, in order to help us to come with boldness, in order to beget
within us a spirit of childlike expectancy and trust. I fancy when I
hear some prayers, that we imagine God keeps His heart bolted and
barred, and that we have, by the importunity of our petitions, to force
and batter our way through. That was the kind of notion Job had. You
remember his cry, “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him.” Well, what
would Job do if he did find Him? “Oh,” says Job, “I would order my cause
before Him, and fill my mouth with arguments.” Job thought that every
blessing had to be wrung out of the hands of God. “I would fill my mouth
with arguments,” as if nothing were to be had from God except by hard
and importunate pleading. “Fill your mouth with arguments?” What need is
there for that? Go to Him and call Him “Father”—that is all the argument
you need. Brethren, we receive not, because sometimes we ask amiss. The
old book says that according to our faith it shall be done unto us. We
have received little, because our faith has been so little. We have
treated God as if He were close, economical, niggardly. This word
“Father” is here to teach us confidence, trust, faith, holy boldness; to
inspire us with that perfect love which casteth out all fear. Let us go
to God in the childlike spirit of a simple trust; let us use this golden
key to His great treasure house, which He has placed in our hands; when
we pray, let us say “Father,” and we shall find that before we call He
will answer, and while we are yet speaking He will hear.
“Father,” that is how the prayer begins in Luke’s version. That glorious
word stands alone in all its royal simplicity. Matthew in his version
expands that into “_Our_ Father, which art in heaven.” “_Our_ Father!”
No word in this old book is meaningless, and this little word “our”
gives us a glimpse of the splendid truth. It is not the singular, but
the plural possessive pronoun that our Lord bids us use, not “_my_
Father,” but “_our_ Father.” Of course it is legitimate to use the
singular pronoun “my,” and say “MY Father.” There come times when, with
a great rush of feeling, we realise that God loves us as individuals,
and then we take refuge in the first person singular, just as Paul did
when he said “The Son of God loved ME, and gave Himself for ME.” In
fact, religion never becomes real and vital until it becomes individual
and personal, until we can say like Thomas, “_My_ Lord and _my_ God.”
But in this prayer Christ would have us think not simply of ourselves,
but also of others—not simply of blessings peculiar and personal, but of
blessings shared. So we are to say, not “_my_ Father,” but “OUR Father,”
and by doing so we have linked ourselves to all others who pray this
prayer. “_Our_,” that is the pronoun of partnership. We have said “OUR
Father” in this church this morning, we have confessed that we have the
_same Father_. But people who are the sons and daughters of the one
Father must be brothers and sisters the one to the other. So that when
we said “_our_ Father,” we did more than simply proclaim God’s
Fatherhood—we proclaimed our BROTHERHOOD. And I will not confine myself
to this congregation. It is not simply the brotherhood of those of us
who meet week by week in this Congregational Church that we proclaimed
when we said “our Father,” we proclaimed the _brotherhood of the race_.
Not my Father simply, but OUR Father—for He is the Father of all! The
great truth of the Fatherhood of God implies the correspondingly great
truth of the _brotherhood of man_, and universal brotherhood depends
upon the universal Fatherhood. You cannot have this brotherhood of man,
except by getting them to kneel together and say “our Father.” The link
that binds men together is the possession of a common Father. When we
address God by that sweet name, we awake to the fact that we are all
members of one great family, bound to one another by the strongest and
dearest of ties. Oh! we pray for the time when jealousy, pride, hatred
and war shall cease, when “man to man the world o’er shall brothers be
for a’ that!” I will tell you when that time shall come. It shall come
when you can get all men everywhere to kneel down and begin their prayer
with these grand but simple words “Our Father.”
“Then shall the whole round earth be every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”
“Our Father, _who art in Heaven_,” says Matthew. Our Father is high and
lifted up, He is “in Heaven.” That does not mean that God is not with us
here on earth. He is the High and Holy One who inhabits eternity; but He
is also the one who dwells in the lowly and the contrite heart. But as
Dr. Morison puts it, “On earth there are spots, hearts at least and many
of them, where God is not. He is not admitted. He is shut out. But in
heaven He is all in all. In a peculiar fulness of acceptation, then, God
may be said to be in Heaven.” But this little phrase, “who art in
Heaven,” is something more than a topographical direction. It is more,
shall I say, than God’s postal address. This little phrase _tells us
what kind of a Father we have_. I do not think it at all fanciful to say
with Dr. Stanford, that, as Heaven is the place of perfection, “our
Father, who art in Heaven” may be interpreted to mean, “our Father, who
art the one perfect Father.” But whether this interpretation is
legitimate or not, the idea is a true and Scriptural one. God is the
model—the pattern Father. Paul says that “of Him every fatherhood in
heaven and earth is named.” You can look at the tender relations that
bind the best of fathers to the best of sons here on earth, and I tell
you they but faintly illustrate the tender relations that bind God to
you. He is the one perfect Father. He is perfect in LOVE. “No earthly
father loves like Thee, no mother half so mild.” Mothers may forget
their children but God will never forget us. Parents may turn their
backs upon us, father and mother may forsake us, and even then God will
take us up. He is perfect _in wisdom_. Earthly parents are not always
wise. They are sometimes unwise in severity; they are oftener, I think,
unwise in their love; and many a child’s character has been injured, if
not ruined, by the unwisdom of its parents. But God is all wise. He is
always thinking upon His children for their good. In perfect wisdom,
perfect love, He is working for the best. He is perfect in
_helpfulness_.
Human love can do much, but there are times when human love is helpless.
Have you ever seen a mother watch by a sick child? I have seen a little
one lie in her cot with fevered brow, fighting for life. I have seen her
eyes make mute appeal to her mother, and I have seen the mother sitting
there in torment and agony, watching the death struggle going on and
powerless to help, the very picture of impotent, defeated love. But God
is perfect in _helpfulness_. There is no limit to HIS power. He will be
a refuge for us in trouble; He will make our bed in sickness; He will
make us conquerors over temptation; when we pass through the waters He
will not suffer them to overflow us; and when we enter the valley, into
which no human friend can accompany us, God will be with us still, His
rod and staff they will comfort us. “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” one
other idea the words suggest to me. “Heaven” is spoken of in the Bible
as the place of dominion and authority. “The Lord hath prepared his
throne in the heavens,” says the Psalmist, “and His kingdom ruleth over
all.” In another psalm we get the picture of kings and princes plotting
together to destroy the kingdom of God. “He that sitteth in the
heavens,” in the place of supreme dominion, “shall laugh.” Your
governors and kings are not the true rulers of the universe; they may
fret and fume and bluster as they will, but they are only puppets in the
hands of Him who sitteth in the heavens. When, then, our Lord teaches us
to say, “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” the blessed truth conveyed by
it is, that our Father is in the place of supreme dominion, that love
rules the universe. It is the truth proclaimed by the little silk weaver
as she passed through the streets of Asolo and sang, “God’s in His
heaven—all’s right with the world.” What a blessed truth this is, and
what peace and strength it brings into the soul when it is realised and
felt. Paul had realised it, so he could say, “I know that all things
work together for good.” That President of the Orange Free State had
realised it, whose favourite word was, “All will come right,” which word
stands engraved to-day on his tombstone! Yes! what peace will be ours
when we remember our Father is in Heaven. I remember hearing my friend
Mr. Hopkin Rees, one of our devoted Chinese missionaries, telling about
one of his converts in that far-off land, who had to bear much from
heathen relatives when she became a Christian. They beat her, locked her
up in a room, and tried to starve her into surrender. How do you think
that poor woman sustained herself? I will tell you. By the thought that
her Father was in Heaven, and that “all would come right.” Mr. Rees had
translated an old Welsh hymn into Chinese, the last line of every verse
in which runs, “Fy nhad, sydd urth y lliw.” It cannot sound as sweet in
any other tongue, but this is a rough translation, “My Father’s at the
helm.” And that was the song that poor woman sang day after day, “My
Father’s at the helm.” Yes! He’s at the helm! Let not your heart be
troubled! “Your Father’s at the helm.”
“Our Father, who art in Heaven.” The gospel is in that phrase. I have
not been able to translate into language the half of the beauty and
glory I myself have seen in it. You must find out for yourselves, by
experience, the joy and peace it can bring into life. This name is ours
to use; the love implied in it is ours to enjoy. Not one of us need go
through life alone; not one of us need be orphaned and poor; not one of
us need carry a troubled anxious heart. For Christ has taught us to see
love on the Throne, and to call to the Almighty and Everlasting God who
fainteth not, neither is weary, “Our Father, who art in Heaven.”
III
“Hallowed be Thy Name”
“Hallowed be Thy Name.”—MATT. vi. 9; LUKE xi. 2.
Last Sunday morning we talked together of the new and beautiful name by
which Jesus taught us to address God when we draw near to Him in prayer.
“When we pray, say Father.” This morning we pass on to the consideration
of the first petition in the prayer itself. Between this first petition
and the invocation there is the closest and most intimate connection. In
the invocation Jesus gave us a new name for God. In the first petition
He teaches us to pray for grace, to honour that new name of “Father” by
thought and life.
This “Pearl of Prayer” divides itself naturally into two parts, and it
is a fact worth noticing that the petitions in the first half of the
prayer are all concerned with God’s honour and glory. Our first thoughts
when we kneel in prayer must be of God. Our first petitions must concern
themselves not with our own personal advantage but with God’s glory and
praise. This petition, “Hallowed be Thy name,” stands first, because it
is the first in natural order. For there is an order, “an order of
precedence” shall I say, in prayer. I have seen a volume of sermons by
Mr. Jackson, of Edinburgh, which bears the title “First things first.”
“First things first” is a rule we may well remember in our prayers.
“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,” said our Lord,
and that precept is one for prayer as well as for life. Have you noticed
how faithfully Jesus Himself observed the rule He here laid down for
others? Examine His prayers, and you will find that with Him first
things always came first. The glory of God was always the master
petition in the prayers of Christ. He had to pass through times of sore
distress and pain and agony—and Christ was not above asking for relief,
deliverance, escape from the pain. But His own wishes were always kept
in a subordinate place, it was ever “God first” with Him. “Nevertheless,
not My will but Thine be done.” “Father, glorify Thy name.” That is the
true order in prayer—God first. But we oftentimes reverse the order.
Instead of “first things being first,” first things are often last and
last things often first. Our prayers are occupied mainly with our own
wants and needs and desires. It is a case oftentimes of “self first.”
When we pray even this prayer, the petitions that we utter with the
deepest fervour and earnestness are petitions for personal blessing.
“Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses. Deliver us
from evil.” But the true order is the one observed here, “God first.”
The King of all the petitions is the one that stands in the forefront.
The Westminster Confession says that the chief end of man’s life is “to
glorify God.” The old divines who drew up that confession had gained a
clear glimpse into the true relation of things. Above all personal
interest, above all selfish advantage, stands the glory of God. In the
soldier’s thought, far above any consideration of personal comfort or
safety, or even of life, stands the thought of the honour of the flag
and his country’s weal. And so in the Christian’s mind far above the
thought of self must stand the thought of God. “First things first.”
Before the prayer for daily bread, for forgiveness, for deliverance,
comes the prayer that God may have the glory due unto His name. My
object this morning is to point out, if I can, the sweep and grandeur of
this petition, so that we may understand what it is we pray for when we
say, “Hallowed be Thy name.” Let me first of all try to explain what is
meant by _the name of God_. As Bishop Westcott points out in his
“Revelation of the Father” no thoughtful person can read the Bible
without being struck by the importance which is attached to the Divine
names in the different books. And the _names_ of God are important
because they are revelations of God’s nature. You remember that when
Jacob wrestled with the angel till break of day by the side of the brook
Jabbok his last request to his antagonist was this, “Tell me I pray
Thee, Thy name.” What was it Jacob really wanted to know? I will tell
you. He wanted to know the nature, the character of the mighty Wrestler.
He wanted to know whether it was love or wrath that had constrained him
to pass through that terrible agony. “Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name,”
tell me Thy character, reveal to me Thy heart, “to me Thy name, Thy
nature show,” that was the real meaning of Jacob’s cry. Well, the Bible
is a great book of “names.” If you will turn up your concordances, you
will find in them a long list of “names” for God. And the point to
notice is that every name applied to God means something; every name
tells us something about Him; every name is a light upon His nature.
When you hear a man’s name, it tells you nothing about his character.
You are not a whit nearer knowing what a man is really like for hearing
that his name is John, or David, or Thomas, or Joseph. The names of men
mean nothing, or perhaps it would be truer to say, their meaning has
absolutely no relation to character. They are mere labels. But it is
different in the case of God. Every name applied to Him is significant.
It expresses some aspect of His character. Men caught fresh glimpses
into the depths of the Divine nature, and their new knowledge they
expressed by a new name. So that the names of God are all of them keys
to God’s character. They help us to spell out the secret of His nature.
When then, you read of a man crying out, “Tell me Thy name,” you
understand that what Jacob really wanted to know was what God was. And
when you read of the Psalmist saying, “They that know Thy name, will put
their trust in Thee,” you know that what the Psalmist means is this—that
those who really _know_ God, who know His heart, _will_, cannot help
trusting Him. That, then, is the meaning of “God’s name,” it means the
character of God, as that character has been revealed to us.
When, where and how has that name been revealed to us? Well, it has been
revealed, as the writer of the letter to the Hebrews puts it, “by divers
portions, and in divers manners.”
(1) It has been revealed to us in _Nature_. The Psalmist watching his
sheep in the still and starry night saw God in the arching sky, and
sang, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth
His handiwork.” And one of our own great poets, John Ruskin, has said,
“It is but the outer hem of God’s great mantle, our poor stars do gem.”
The Arabs speak of tracing God’s footsteps in the world; Kepler, in
studying the planets, said he was thinking God’s thoughts after Him;
Mrs. Barrett-Browning cries, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every
common bush afire with God.” Yes! God reveals His name to us through
nature. I have been shown rocks which bear upon them indentations that
have some resemblance to a cloven foot, and I have been told of legends
that connect those marks with the devil. The devil, so the legends say,
made those particular rocks a momentary resting-place, and in the cloven
foot he has left his mark upon them for ever. But, brethren, it is not
the devil’s mark, but God’s mark that the great world bears. I can see
God’s mark on the sky and the sea, on mountain and flood, on flower and
tree. When I look at the great mountains I cannot help remembering that
it was God who planted them there. “He weighed the mountains in scales
and the hills in a balance.” When I look at the great and wide sea, at
the sunny, sleepy sea, at the angry, restless sea, I remember it was God
who placed it there. “He measured the waters in the hollow of His hand.
He has placed bounds for it which it cannot pass.” When I see the
lightning flash, I remember that the lightning is His messenger. When I
hear the thunder roll, I remember that the thunder is His voice. When I
see the birds of the air, I remember that not one of them falls to the
ground without God. When I see the lilies of the field, I remember that
God clothes them. Oh, yes, the world speaks of God. It is true, as
Coleridge sings in his magnificent “Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of
Chamouni”—
“Earth with her thousand voices praises God.”
But Nature does not tell all the secret. If we knew only what Nature
tells we should be compelled to cry with the old Hebrew prophet,
“Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.” After all Nature has to
say, our entreaty is still, “Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name.”
(2) God’s name has been revealed to us more plainly _in the Bible_. In
this book you have one name for God following another, and with every
fresh name came new light. Westcott says that “the three chief stages in
the history of the Old Testament are characterised in broad outline by
the names under which God was pleased to make Himself known in each!”
First He is El-Shaddai, the God of might. Then He is Jehovah, the Great
I AM, the God of the covenant. Then He is Lord of Hosts, the King of the
Universe, the Disposer of Events, the Ruler of the world. It was a great
event in the history of men when God announced by His servants and
prophets a new name for Himself: We talk about great discoveries—the
discovery of a new mountain range, or river, or lake in the Dark
Continent, the discovery of some new facts in the realm of science, the
discovery of some new method of applying Nature’s forces to do men’s
work. I am not saying these are not great discoveries, but I do say the
greatest discovery that ever happens in this world of ours is the
discovery of a new name for God. You have the history of those names,
those discoveries in the Bible. To trace the giving of these names is to
trace the history of men as they were being led out of darkness into His
most marvellous light.
But who would not feel that, if the Bible stopped short at the book of
Malachi, the light at best was only the dim and uncertain twilight. If
the old book finished there, our cry would be still, “Tell me, I pray
Thee, Thy name.” Well, thanks be to Him, He has told us His name. He has
kept nothing from us.
(3) God has revealed Himself fully to us _in Jesus Christ_. He had given
glimpses of Himself to seers and prophets before. But God was greater
and better than the best word even Isaiah had said about Him. And at
last, when the fulness of time was come, God told the final truth about
Himself by sending Jesus Christ into the world. He is the effulgence of
His glory and the express image of His person. There are likenesses
between human beings. We talk about “family likenesses.” There are
striking resemblances between father and son, mother and daughter,
brother and sister. But with the resemblances there are also
differences. You can always distinguish between one and another. But
between God and Jesus Christ the likeness is absolute. There are no
differences. Jesus is the Word of God. He is what God is, expressed in
terms of human thought and speech. God has kept nothing back from us. He
has reserved no secret. You may enter into the holiest place by the
blood of Jesus. What is God’s name? God’s name is Jesus Christ. In Jesus
you get the full and final revelation of God’s character. God could not
fully reveal Himself through nature. He could not have been pictured for
us in a book. It was only in a _life_ that God could fully reveal
Himself, and that full revelation He gave in the life of His Son. When
Philip said to Jesus, “Shew us the Father,” Jesus answered, “I and my
Father are one. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Jesus was
God’s answer to the cry of man—“Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name.” It is
by looking at Jesus, then, that we discover the character of God. And if
you ask me, after studying Christ’s life, what I find God’s character to
be and what His best name is, I answer that His nature is love, and that
the best name that describes Him is the name “Father.” When, then, Jesus
tells us to pray, “Hallowed be Thy name,” He is telling us to honour
God’s character as revealed in Himself. He is telling us to honour God
as Father both in thought and life.
Now let me pass on to ask, _How may we hallow God’s name?_ You remember
the old commandment “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in
vain.” Well, we must give a strict obedience to that old commandment if
we are to hallow God’s name. There are men in our midst who can scarcely
utter a sentence without dragging in the name of God. They interlard
their speech with oaths, and blasphemously use the name of the sacred
Majesty on High. Such men dishonour and degrade the Holy Name. But if we
imagine that by abstaining from the vulgar and wicked habit of swearing
we have “hallowed God’s name,” we are much mistaken. The Jews of old
gave scrupulous obedience to the letter of the command, “Thou shalt not
take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” but they violated its
spirit. They were so scrupulous that they would not even pronounce the
sacred name. They passed it over in silence; they would never tread upon
a piece of paper lying on the ground for fear the sacred name might be
written upon it. And yet the Jew, while giving this strict literal
obedience to the command, was all the while violating its spirit, and by
his sin, his greed, his hypocrisy, was dishonouring that God whose name
he feared to pronounce.
And for the matter of that, there are people amongst us who attach, as
the ancient Jews did, a superstitious reverence to the name, who treat
it as if it were a charm; who pay an idolatrous worship to the mere
word. I have been occasionally to services in the cathedrals and parish
churches of our land, and I have noticed that the men and women who
attend them will bow at “the name.” Now I am not prepared to say that
act is wrong, but I am quite prepared to say that the tendency of all
such practices is to make people imagine that God is to be honoured and
worshipped by mere externalisms. The danger of such a practice is that
of making people imagine they have “hallowed God’s name,” by bowing in
church. Brethren, it is all a very pitiful delusion. What is the use of
bowing at the name, if people go home to be selfish and unkind, or to
their business to be hard and over-reaching; or into society to be
gossips and tale-bearers? In spite of the outward respect they pay, such
people dishonour God’s name, drag it through the mire, and make it the
jest of blasphemers and fools. “Hallowing God’s name” does not mean
bowing when that sacred name is pronounced: it means honouring the
character of God, as that character has been made known to us in Jesus
Christ. This is a prayer not simply for the man to pray who is fighting
against the blaspheming habit, it is a prayer that the best of
Christians may well utter. Well, how shall we “hallow God’s name?”
(1) _By cherishing worthy ideas of God._ We are _dishallowing_ (if I may
be allowed to use the word) God’s name when we have unworthy ideas of
His nature. We are sinning against this name “Father” when we think of
God as harsh, unkind, cruel. Our new theology may have its defects and
its dangers, but at any rate it “has hallowed God’s name.” It has made
God more beautiful, more tender, more loving and lovable. Do you know I
am not surprised that men broke out into revolt against the stern, hard,
pitiless theology of a century ago. Theologians were attributing to God
conduct that would be branded as hateful in men! Augustine and Calvin
have laid the Church under vast obligations, but when Augustine and
Calvin talked about little infants being damned, they were dishonouring
God’s name, casting a slur upon His character, and sinning against His
Fatherhood. There is an old painting in one of the Italian galleries
which pictures God as shooting arrows at men, and Jesus catching them
before they reached their mark. That picture represents the spirit of
much of the old theology. Christ is represented as kind and pitiful, but
God is represented as cruel, vengeful, vindictive. Brethren, that is a
libel upon God. It is a cruel slander upon God’s character. “God is
love.” “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.” God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. That is the true
picture. Refuse to believe in anything that contradicts that. Refuse to
believe that God can ever be guilty of what would be accounted base in
man. Believe with Whittier, that
“Nothing can be good in Him, which evil is in me.”
Say with Browning, “Thou, God, art Love. I build my faith on that.” You
must cherish lofty, beautiful, gracious thoughts of God if you are to
hallow His name. And go on to know the Lord. There are depths of love in
God, unrealised as yet by the best of us. I know a valley in South
Wales, which outwardly is not much to look at, but in its bosom are
buried vast treasures, and men who have digged beneath the surface have
found there boundless wealth. The deeper we penetrate into the nature of
God, the more loving, the more gracious we shall find Him to be.
Therefore, press on to know Him, until you come to feel that God is your
passion and your joy, that in earth, in heaven, you want none but Him.
By so doing, you will be hallowing God’s name.
But God’s name must be hallowed not only in thought, but in life. So I
pass on to say that not only can you hallow God’s name by cherishing
worthy thoughts of God, but you can hallow God’s name also—
(2) By the _trustfulness of your life_. Jesus has told us God’s name of
“Father” by quietly trusting Him. You cannot dishonour a friend more
than by refusing to trust him, can you? Distrust, suspicion, is an
insult to friendship. A child cannot dishonour a father more than by
fearing him, being suspicious about him, doubting his love. Fear,
suspicion, distrust—these things are an insult to fatherhood. Are we
never guilty of insulting the Fatherhood of God? I have heard people
sometimes complain of God, of God’s dealing with them in Providence.
They have spoken as if God used them hardly. They have spoken as if God
had His favourites. They have spoken as if God had lost His love for
them. What were they doing? Dishonouring God’s name, casting a slur upon
His character, forgetting that His nature is love and His name is
Father. Men who, in spite of Calvary, think God can be unkind, are doing
insult to His love. If you want to hallow God’s name, trust Him to the
uttermost; “rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.” Job hallowed
God’s name, when, amid the wreck of all his earthly fortunes, he said,
“Even though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” Paul hallowed God’s name
when, looking at the cross, he said, “All things work together for good
to them that love God.” Samuel Rutherford honoured God’s name when,
writing from his prison in Aberdeen, he said, “I have nothing to say of
my Lord’s cross but much good.” I have read of a child who in the midst
of a storm at sea remained quiet, calm, and fearless, and who, on being
asked how it was she was not afraid, answered, with the simplicity of
childhood, “My father is the captain.” She honoured the name father by
her perfect trustfulness. We find ourselves in storms sometimes—storms
of trouble, storms of doubt, storms of bereavement and grief. It is in
such storms we have the most glorious opportunities of hallowing God’s
name. Let us ask Him for grace to honour His Fatherhood by trusting Him
in the dark and cloudy day. Man, the child, cannot hallow God’s name of
“Father” better than by a quiet, simple trustfulness.
(3) We can hallow God’s name of “Father” by _our obedience_. The Italian
brigand will repeat the Pater Noster and then go on with his robbery.
The Mussulman will interlard his filthiest talk with appeals to Allah.
But nothing is so dishonouring to God as profession without practice.
God will have obedience and not sacrifice. God was weary of the outward
marks of respect the Jews paid Him, because all these outward marks of
reverence were accompanied by gross and persistent disobedience of life.
Does a child want to honour his father? He cannot do it better than by
being an obedient child, by giving prompt and willing obedience to his
father’s commands. Do you want to honour your Father in heaven? Obey
Him. Obey Him in the home; obey Him in society; obey Him in your
business; obey Him in your public and political life. Obey Him promptly,
absolutely, willingly. That was how Jesus hallowed His Father’s name.
From the earliest dawn of life He was about His Father’s business. It
was His meat and drink to do God’s will. He was born at Bethlehem, He
laboured in Galilee, He drank the bitter cup in the garden, He died upon
the Cross—all because it was God’s will. He gave to His Father full,
absolute, glad obedience, so that in His prayer He could say to God, “I
have glorified Thy name,” and God could look upon Him and say, “Thou art
My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” If you want to honour your
Heavenly Father, _obey Him_! We try to put God off with a little outward
respect, we bow at His name, we bend in prayer before Him, we sing hymns
to His praise; but better than all your bowing and hymn singing and
multiplied prayers is the daily obedience of the life. “If ye love Me,”
says God, “keep My commandments.” To-morrow, in the shop and the office
and the school and the home, make it your meat and drink to do the
Father’s will and to finish His work; so will you, too, like your great
Elder Brother, glorify God’s name, and like Him you, too, will one day
hear God say, “Thou art My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
IV
The Second Petition
“Thy Kingdom come.”—MATT. vi. 10; LUKE xi. 2.
The Bible is a book of hope. It looks, not backward, but forward. It has
its face turned towards the light. It always speaks of “a best that is
still to be.” We open its pages and we read of Eden; of a time when the
world was free from pain and sorrow and sadness, because man was free
from sin. While man was innocent his home was a garden, all nature
served him, a sky that was always blue smiled down upon him, and God was
his familiar friend. But we read on a chapter or two and a change comes
over the aspect of things. Eden disappears, and has never been found
since. Joy, harmony, peace vanish, and leave behind them discord,
sorrow, hate. When man sinned, pain and grief and death entered the
world, man’s sky grew black with clouds; God no longer spoke with him in
the cool of the evening, and he was driven out of the garden, at the
gates of which the cherubim were posted with swords of flame which
pointed every way, as if to say, “No return, no return.”
But even in the story of that bitter loss I detect the note of “hope.”
You perhaps remember the old Greek legend which says that when Pandora
was married to Epimetheus the gods gave her a box, which was full of
winged blessings, as a wedding present. As long as Pandora kept the box
locked, so long life was like a summer’s day. She and her husband
enjoyed every blessing. But one day, tempted by curiosity, she opened
the box, and on the instant the little winged creatures who were locked
inside took flight and left her for ever. All? did I say. No, not quite
all. _Hope_ remained at the bottom of the box, the only blessing left to
Pandora and her husband! And so exactly man lost everything by sin
except _hope_. When God made man He gave him every blessing. But when
man unmade himself, these blessings took flight. He lost his innocence,
he lost his peace, he lost his happiness, he lost his home, he lost
everything but _hope_. God left him _hope_ to comfort him in his bitter
grief. God left him _hope_ to save him from despair. When man’s night
was blackest, God sent into his sky a star, a star that was the promise
of a day to come. In pronouncing doom upon disobedient man, God also
gave him a promise as if to say, “It shall not always be midnight and
deep despair with thee. Thy dayspring shall again arise.” That note of
hope, struck even in the story of the tragedy of the fall, is the
key-note of the Bible. The Bible is a book of the future, and the
spring-time, and the dawn. You will not find its pages taken up with
regrets for the Eden which has been lost; it looks forward to a better
Eden still to come. It does not spend its time in bewailing the sunshine
that has disappeared from the earth; it rather bids men wake and watch
that they may be ready to greet the still more glorious day which is
about to break. For as you read the Bible, what do you discover? You
discover one glowing promise after another given by God; you find hope
ever waxing stronger; you find the assurance that the night is
departing, ever waxing more confident, until at last some prophet, of
keener vision than the rest, catches on the peaks of distant hills the
foregleam of the dawn, beholds the vision of the light, not of moon or
stars, but of the sun, and announces to a world sick with longing for
the day, that “the light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen
upon thee.” It is to the future the Bible looks. From its first page to
the last it preaches the glad gospel of _hope_. The old Eden which has
been lost is a prophecy of the better Eden to be gained. The “golden
age” of the Bible is before, not behind. Paganism could only look back
wistfully to the past and sigh for the reign of Saturn, when the earth
had peace and plenty and joy—those glad days which had been, but could
return no more. But the Bible teaches us to look forward. Our good time
is still to come. Our golden age is still in the womb of the future. We
are still looking for that glorious “last for which the first was made.”
It is of the golden age to which the Christian looks forward that this
second petition speaks. “Thy Kingdom come” is a prayer for the good time
coming, a prayer for the golden age, a prayer for the better Eden. For
the earth’s golden age will come when God is King. I say the _earth’s_
golden age advisedly. Let me emphasise it—_the earth’s_ golden age! For
many have misinterpreted the reference of this petition. Tertullian, the
old Latin father, would have made this petition the third, not the
second. He would have read the prayer thus, “Hallowed be Thy name, Thy
will be done, Thy Kingdom come,” because he thought this prayer for
God’s kingdom referred to the end of the world and the second advent.
But when Jesus teaches us to pray that God’s kingdom may come, He means
that we are to pray that God may reign _here_ upon the earth, that men
_here_ may acknowledge Him as King, that life _here_ may be regulated by
His commands. This is not a prayer that we may be taken out of earth
into heaven, but it is a prayer that heaven may come down to earth, so
that earth itself may become heavenly. It is a prayer for the “new earth
wherein dwelleth righteousness.” It is a prayer for the world’s golden
age—a golden age which shall come when there is established here on
earth that kingdom of God which is righteousness, peace, and joy in the
Holy Ghost. Have you noticed how in most men’s minds the idea of a
“golden age” is associated with the name of some king? The Israelites
associated it with the name of David; the Germans associated it with the
name of Frederick Barbarossa; for us British folk a special halo of
romance gathers round the time of Arthur and his Knights of the Round
Table. And as a matter of fact, the world’s good time is inseparably
connected with the coming of a King and the establishment of a kingdom.
But the kingdom is no earthly royalty, and the King is no David or
Barbarossa or Arthur come back to life again. The kingdom is the kingdom
of God, and the name of the King is Jesus. When that Kingdom is
established, when that King is enthroned, a better Eden shall be here
than the Eden we have lost. It is the world’s evil time just now. Earth
is full of misery and grief and pain. Many are the schemes propounded
for mending matters, and God knows they need mending. Each man has his
own nostrum, every quack his own panacea; but if we leave God and Christ
out of account every plan is doomed to fail. We shall mend matters only
by making God a reality, and the final establishment of right and
justice, and joy will come only when _He_ is enthroned as King. But you
may say to me, “Is not God King now? Is not the world His? Are not all
men in His hands?” That is perfectly true! I do not forget that the
earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof, the world and they that
dwell therein. It is my joy and strength to remember that in spite of
all the bluster and brave show made by the forces of evil, the Lord God
omnipotent reigneth! But if you will examine the basis of _that_
Kingship you will find it rests on God’s _Creatorship_. He is Lord of
the world and of men because He has created them—because in Him they
live and move and have their being. But God wants to be King in Jesus
Christ—that is to say, He wants to be King in virtue not of His power,
but of His _love_. He wants men to obey Him not because they are afraid
of Him, but because they love Him. Look at the prayer: “_Thy_ kingdom
come.” Whose kingdom is it? Well, it is “our _Father’s_” kingdom. Oh,
this is a kingdom of love! God wants to be King not because He is
Creator, but because He is _Father_. He wants men to be obedient to Him
not under the pressure of force, but under the sweet constraint of love.
God has been King by the title of Creator since the world began; but He
is not even yet King by the title of “Father.” He is not even yet King
in Jesus Christ. It is for _this_ kingdom we are to pray; for the time
when men shall realise what God’s Fatherhood means, for the time when
men’s hearts shall be so touched by God’s love to them in Jesus Christ,
that out of pure and grateful affection they will render Him a willing
and glad obedience.
“Thy kingdom come.” The prayer, you will notice, regards the “kingdom”
as something still to be realised. As yet it is in the future. In other
places in the New Testament it is talked of as actually existent. Both
views are true—the kingdom is both _present_ and _future_. You remember
that when the Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom of God should come,
he observed, “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, for lo,
the kingdom of God _is in your midst_.” The Pharisees were treating as
future what was already present. The kingdom of God was already in their
midst. But it was not surprising that the Pharisees failed to discover
the presence of the kingdom. It was a very tiny affair at the time. Its
subjects were only a handful of Galilean peasants. Our Lord Himself,
speaking of the tiny, unnoticed beginning of the kingdom, said it was
like unto leaven which a woman took and _hid_ in three measures of meal!
The kingdom is not hidden to-day. The leaven has been working through
the centuries. The presence of the _kingdom_ is the most noticeable fact
in the world’s life to-day. We talk about the great empires of the
world! We talk about the British Empire embracing one-fifth part of the
habitable globe: and the great Russian Empire claiming a sixth part of
the world; and the German Empire and the French Empire, and the rest of
them. But there is one Empire greater, vaster than any other—the Empire
of King Jesus. It is _in our midst_, the mightiest kingdom, the most
potent force on earth.
And yet, while the kingdom of God is thus _present_ and potent, it is
still _future_. Its full realisation has yet to come. So long as there
is in this world one man who has not yielded his heart to Christ, so
long as there is a single department of life which is not brought into
subjection to the law of Christ, so long will the kingdom be
_unrealised_, so long shall we need to pray this prayer, “Thy kingdom
come.” All the misery of this world is due to the fact that there are
multitudes of men still in rebellion, that there are whole departments
of human activity which are not regulated by the spirit of Christ. The
kingdom is still imperfect, incomplete. Its full establishment lies in
the future somewhere. Until that full establishment takes place, until
God is King everywhere and over everybody and everything, the world’s
golden age will never come.
_What kind of kingdom is this?_ It is worth while noticing that the
“kingdom” occupied a large place in the thought and speech of Christ.
His gospel was a gospel of the kingdom. He announced that He had come to
found a kingdom; He claimed the title “King” for Himself; and in what is
known as the Sermon on the Mount, He gave us, shall I say, the laws and
rules of the kingdom. Christ was not the first to picture an “Ideal
State,” Plato had already done it in his “Republic.” But Plato’s picture
would not satisfy you or me. It is an impossible, fantastic dream.
Plato’s state, with its philosopher king and its destruction of the
family, repels instead of attracting us. But the kingdom of God which
Christ has pictured for us, that gleaming vision of a new earth in which
love shall rule, fascinates and enthrals us, and the hope of its
realisation becomes the mainspring of all human progress and attainment.
Well what kind of a kingdom is it? Let me answer in the words of the
great Apostle Paul, and say, “The kingdom of God is righteousness and
peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” There you have in one brief sentence
the characteristics of the kingdom. The kingdom of God is
_righteousness_, or, in other words, the kingdom of God is _justice_.
There is cruel wrong in this world of ours, wrong that daily cries up to
God for vengeance. Man wrongs man, brother oppresses brother. The dark
places of the earth are full of cruelty, and places that are usually
supposed to be “light,” like this favoured England of ours, are full of
cruelty also. Oh, brethren, to see the wrong, the oppression, the
wickedness of life, is a maddening sight! I can understand how men are
sometimes driven by it into the blasphemy of despair! But the kingdom of
God is justice—strict, level, even-handed justice. When _His_ kingdom
comes, tyranny, oppression, wrong shall cease; men shall do right out of
love for their righteous King.
The kingdom of God is _peace_. Peace between men, peace between nations.
All strife and mutual distrust shall be for ever buried, and the noise
of war shall be heard no more, but men shall beat their swords into
plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks. Hate and enmity shall
die. “The wolf and the lamb shall lie down together, and the lion shall
eat straw like the ox. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy
mountain,” saith the Lord.
The kingdom of God is _joy_. We are in the winter of our discontent just
now. Life is full of tears and grief and pain. The tears and the grief
and pain spring from the hate and the oppressions and the injustices of
life. But when God is King there shall be justice and peace, and joy
will follow as a natural consequence. Justice, peace, happiness those
are the characteristics of the kingdom of God! Is not this a kingdom
worth praying for?
Now let me go on to ask the question, _What is the sphere of the
kingdom?_ First let me say, the sphere of the kingdom is the _individual
heart_. When I pray, “Thy kingdom come” I do not feel that I am praying
solely for the work of foreign missions. I do not think only of the
millions of heathen in China or India or Africa. When I pray “Thy
kingdom come,” I am not satisfied with adding to the thought of the
heathen abroad remembrance of the heathen at home. No! when I utter that
prayer I feel I am praying for myself. I am praying that God’s kingdom
may come in my own heart. Oh, yes, this prayer has reference to
ourselves. When we pray “Thy kingdom come,” we pray “Lord, come into our
own hearts; rule _there_; take the throne _there_: make us completely
thine.” “Thy kingdom come!” Brethren, do we mean it? Do we honestly
desire it? For see what it means. It means that we are asking that every
cherished sin and passion may be cast out of our hearts; it means that
we desire that neither money nor pleasure nor fame should have any power
over us or draw away our love from God. It means that God’s will and not
our own may rule. Oh, that is a great prayer! Do we honestly and
sincerely mean what we say? I have known men who loved their sins too
much, their pleasures, their money, themselves too much, ever to be able
to pray sincerely “Thy kingdom come!” May God give us grace honestly to
pray this prayer! May He make us able and willing to give to His
commands a glad and complete obedience! God’s kingdom must come in our
own hearts before it can come in the world at large! It is only true and
loyal subjects of the kingdom who can extend its boundaries and further
its interests. Men will not enter the kingdom, though we preach to them
till Doomsday, if we ourselves remain without. But if God truly reigns
in our hearts, and His kingdom begets in us righteousness, peace, and
joy, we shall then be able to go forth and win others as loyal subjects
to our King.
But in offering this prayer, we must not stop at ourselves. The prayer
embraces _the wide world in its sweep_. Thy kingdom come! Where?
Everywhere. All nations are to bow down before Him, all people are to
serve Him. Men discuss the question sometimes as to which race is likely
to become the dominant race in the earth. We people who live in this
little island are inclined to believe that this splendid destiny is
reserved for the Anglo-Saxon race. We stand among the nations for the
principles of liberty and truth and justice; and as I heard Dr. Clifford
say some months ago, we believe that “the momentum of these ideas will
carry us to the government of the earth.” And so far as England does
stand for those great ideas, I am not ashamed to confess I am an English
Imperialist. But there is something I am more anxious about even than
the dominion of England, and that is the dominion of Christ. Above
everything else I am a Christian Imperialist. I want to see the banner
of the Cross floating over every land. I want to see every nation
acknowledging one and the same King—even Jesus. I want to see the crown
of the world on the brow which bears still the scars of the crown of
thorns! And, brethren, I know that all this shall come to pass! The
place of England in the future of the world is, after all, a matter of
conjecture. But there is no conjecture, no doubt, no perhaps about the
place of Christ. He is destined for the throne! He shall reign till He
hath put all enemies under His feet, “Thy kingdom come” in my own heart,
over all the world, and let me add _in every department of life_. When
we pray this prayer, we are praying that God may rule in our business
life, and our social life, and our political life. We are asking Him to
preside in our Parliaments and our Council Chambers. We are asking Him
to take the government of our markets and our offices and our exchanges.
We are asking Him to be Lord in the realms of art and literature. What
an enormous sweep this prayer has! And we must not only pray this form
of words, but if our prayer is not to be a sham and a pretence, we must
_toil_ to realise the kingdom. “Laborare est orare,” says the old Latin
proverb: “To labour is to pray.” At any rate, no one has truly prayed
this prayer who does not bend all his energies to the task of seeking to
establish this kingdom on earth. England keeps in every important
foreign town consuls to look after the interests of English people. Let
me use that to illustrate the duties of Christian people. We are in this
world to look after the interests of God and of His kingdom. We are His
consuls. You business men, you are in business to look after God’s
interests and to promote His kingdom! You professional men—doctors,
lawyers, schoolmasters—you are in your professions to look after God’s
interests and to promote His kingdom! You politicians, you are in
politics to look after God’s interests and to promote His kingdom! You
fathers and mothers in the homes, you are there to look after God’s
interests and to promote His kingdom. You must be Christian business
men, Christian lawyers, Christian doctors, Christian teachers, Christian
politicians, Christian parents. Be faithful to your trust! _So_ live,
_so_ labour, that God’s kingdom may come! No wish or prayer of ours can
make the summer come an hour before its time, or stave off by one hour
the approach of grim winter, but it _does depend_ upon our prayers and
labours whether it shall be soon or late that summer gladness shall come
into the souls of men; whether it shall be soon or late that Christ
shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied.
Let me now proceed to the question, “_How is this kingdom to be
established?_” Let me first say how it _cannot_. It cannot be
established by force. Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon built up their empires
with the sword, and cemented them with blood, but not so is the kingdom
of God to be established. Men have tried that method; they have used
fire and sword to make God’s kingdom come. Peter had that spirit when he
pointed to the two swords the disciples possessed. Mahomet followed this
plan when he gave to men the alternative, either Islam or death. The
Crusaders, spurred on by the burning eloquence of Peter the Hermit,
committed the same blunder. The old Saxon and Gothic kings, who when
they accepted Christianity themselves compelled their people to be
baptised as well, followed the same mistaken method. But these people
did not advance the kingdom of God one whit. You do not make a man a
member of this kingdom by baptising him, or enrolling him among the
adherents of a church, or by _calling_ him a Christian. Men must have
their hearts changed, they must be born again. They must be willing to
render glad obedience to their _Father_ King before they become members
of this kingdom. Force may increase the numbers of a sect, it cannot add
one to the membership of the kingdom. The sword may compel a man to
change his name; it can never compel him to change his heart! Oh no; it
is not by the sword that God’s kingdom will come. To all ecclesiastical
persecutors Christ says, “Put the sword up into its sheath.” Not by the
sword is the kingdom to come, but by the Cross! Constantine of old, when
on the eve of a critical battle, dreamed he saw a cross in the sky, and
around it this legend, Σὑ τουτῷ vῖκᾳ, “by this conquer.” That is the
weapon we have to use in our warfare. That is the weapon whereby God’s
kingdom is to be established. We are to conquer “by the Cross.” We are
to conquer by the power of love. For the Cross means love—love at its
best, love in the glory of sacrifice. The Cross is the power of God. It
is by the story of the Cross that men’s hearts are to be broken, and
their affection and allegiance won. “By this conquer” is the charge
given to us. Preach the Cross! Exalt the dying Redeemer of men! When we
lift Him up He will draw all men unto Him.
“Thy kingdom come.” It is a prayer to-day; but the time will come when
the prayer shall be changed into praise, and we shall be able to say,
“Thy kingdom has come!” It has been coming for eighteen hundred years,
and it is not here yet; but doubt not, despair not, faint not, it SHALL
come. Men have called the visions such men as Plato and Sir Thomas More
have given us of the “Ideal State,” “Utopias,” “Nowheres,” to mark their
idea of those visions as fantastic, impractical, impossible. But let no
one dare to call the kingdom of God a Utopia. Let no one dare to say of
the new earth which Christ foretold that it is a vain, an impossible
dream. To say that is to deny the faith, and to be guilty of the great
Apostasy. Do you say that the establishment of a kingdom of justice and
peace and joy is impossible? I will tell you nay. God is pledged to it,
and He shall not fail nor be discouraged. The time is coming when our
evil hearts shall be made pure and clean; the time is coming when our
life day by day shall be sweet and holy and happy; the time is coming
when lying, deceit, and greed and strife, and distrust and shame shall
be banished from the earth; the time is coming when asylums and
penitentiaries and gaols shall no longer openly proclaim our shame; the
time is coming when the drunkard and the profligate and the criminal and
the harlot shall be no more, but the people shall be all righteous—a
branch of God’s planting, that He may be glorified! The time is coming
when trade and politics and pleasure shall be carried on to the glory of
God. The time is coming when literature and art shall be cleansed of all
impure taint, and shall speak of God as the Bible speaks of Him to-day.
The time is coming when China and India and the Dark Continent and the
isles of the sea shall place their crowns on the head of Christ. The
time is coming when every idol shall be broken and every superstition
destroyed, and the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the
waters cover the sea. The time is coming when righteousness, peace, and
joy shall everywhere prevail, and sin and wrong shall be words whose
meaning men no longer understand. _Sursum corda._ Lift up your hearts!
That glorious time is coming! That glorious day is about to break. “The
world is grey with morning light.” Thy Kingdom come! It _must_ come; it
_will_ come. Its coming does not depend upon you or me, but upon the
risen and exalted Christ. “The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His
hands.”
Break, triumphant day of God,
Break at last, our hearts to cheer;
Throbbing souls and holy songs
Wait to hail thy dawning here.
Empires, temples, sceptres, thrones,
May they all for God be won;
And, in every human heart,
Father, let Thy kingdom come.
V
The Third Petition
“Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.”—MATT. vi. 10
The third petition, which is omitted from Luke’s version of the Prayer,
springs directly and naturally out of the second petition, and is really
explanatory of it. We have been taught to pray, “Thy kingdom come.”
God’s kingdom _will_ come, when His will is done on earth, as it is done
in heaven.
The central idea of kingship is that of _rule_, _authority_, _power_.
Kingship is only real and effective when the King commands and the
people obey. In heaven God’s kingship is a reality. The eyes of all the
inhabitants of the better land wait upon God. Cherubim and Seraphim,
saints and angels, delight to do His will. In heaven, God speaks and it
is done. This third petition is a prayer that men may learn to obey God
as the angels do, so that His kingship may be as real and as effective
here on earth as it is now in heaven.
Jurists draw a distinction between kings _de jure_—kings by legal right,
and kings _de facto_—in actual possession and exercise of the royal
power. Now God, if I may be allowed to say so, is the world’s King _de
jure_. He is the world’s lawful Sovereign and rightful Lord. “The earth
is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world and they that dwell
therein.” But God is not King _de facto_. His kingship is not effective.
His people do not obey. There are large sections of the world, whole
departments of human activity, where His rule is not recognised. Ireland
is part of the Queen’s dominions; but there have been times when the
Queen could scarcely be said to _reign_ in Ireland. At the time when the
Irish troubles were at their height, it was a common saying that in
certain districts of Ireland it was not the Queen who ruled, but the
Land League. Cuba was until last year part of the dominions of the King
of Spain. The Spanish flag floated over its arsenals and forts. It was
with the ministers of the King of Spain that all negotiations with
reference to Cuba had to be carried on. Cuban coins and Cuban postage
stamps bore the image and superscription of the Spanish sovereign. But
for all that, for the past ten years or so the kingship of Alphonso over
Cuba was merely nominal. Outside Havanna and Santiago Alphonso could not
be said to _reign_. Not all the armies of Spain could make his kingship
real and effective over the rebellious interior. In much the same way
God is the King of the world. He is its lawful Sovereign. No one else
has a shred of title or claim to an inch of its territory or to the
allegiance of one of its inhabitants. “The kingdom is the Lord’s, and He
is Governor among the nations.” But while God is King of the world _de
jure_, He is not King _de facto_. His kingship is nominal—not real and
effective; for there are parts of the world over which God cannot be
said to _rule_. There are multitudes of men who are in rebellion against
Him, and who refuse to acknowledge His authority. God’s writs do not
run. His law is not obeyed. His will is not done.
And here we come across that solemn and awful power which is the
prerogative of manhood—the _power of resisting the will of God_. Nature
obeys God’s will. The flower that blooms in hedge-side or meadow; the
lark that sings its way up to heaven’s gate in the spring sunshine; the
rivers that roll towards the sea; the ocean with its regular ebb and
flow; the sun and moon and stars observing their seasons and travelling
along their appointed orbits—all these are what they are, and do what
they do in obedience to God’s will. The wind is God’s messenger; the
thunder His voice; the lightning His sword. Nature obeys God. And above,
in heaven, the angels and the blest do God’s pleasure. “Thousands at His
bidding speed, and post o’er land and ocean without rest.” Is there any
one then who resists God’s will? Yes, there is one, just one, and that
one is _man_. In all God’s universe he is the only one who is
disobedient. He is the only one who clenches his fist and says “No” to
God. He is the only one invested with the terrible power of resisting,
thwarting, opposing the will of God. And that awful power he possesses
because he possesses a free and independent will of his own. God made
man, we are told, in His own likeness. The special feature that marks
man off from the brute creation and links him on to the Divine, is his
possession of _moral freedom_. God is a moral Being. Man, too, is a
moral being. But in order to make man a moral being, God had to limit
Himself and make man _free_. For there can be no moral quality where
there is no freedom. Nature is un-moral because nature acts under
necessity. Man is _not_ under necessity. He can either obey or disobey.
He is a moral being because he is _free_.
Now all the misery of the world is due to the fact that man abused his
freedom, that he chose not to obey, but to _dis_-obey. What was the
first sin? An act of disobedience; and that act of disobedience brought
in its train a multitude of woes. I want you to remember that vice is
not here by God’s will; lust is not here by God’s will; strife and
malice and envy are not here by God’s will; war and bloodshed and
slaughter are not here by God’s will; misery and poverty and shame are
not here by God’s will. They are here by _man’s_ will, because man set
up his own will in opposition to that of God. The secret of the world’s
unhappiness and sorrow and pain you will find in these familiar words of
the General Confession, “We have followed too much the devices and
desires of our own hearts.” “Selfishness,” as Bishop Westcott says,
“lies at the root of all sin.” Here is the fountain of the world’s woe,
that man preferred his own will rather than the will of God. While man
was obedient there was happiness and joy, happiness that lasted. As John
Milton says—
—till disproportioned Sin
Jarr’d against nature’s chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion sway’d
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience and their state of good.
But from that day, that day of disobedience, the whole creation has been
groaning and travailing together in pain until now. But to discover the
fountain of the disease is also to discover the secret of the remedy. If
the world owes its present misery to the fact that man has followed his
own will, the world will see its perfect day when man submits his own
will to the will of God. “Come and let us _return_” is the prophet’s
cry, “let us get back to the old allegiance.” “Come and let us return”
is the preacher’s call to-day. The way to the millennium is along the
path of obedience. When God’s kingship is real and effective, because
men everywhere are obedient, the Golden Age will have dawned. The new
earth wherein dwelleth righteousness will be a blessed fact when—
We learn with God to will one will,
To do and to endure.
_Thy Will be done!_ This petition teaches us that it must be our supreme
desire that God may have His way with us. You will notice, as I pointed
out a Saturday or two ago, that this petition comes before the petitions
for personal blessing. It is infinitely more important that God’s will
should be done than that we should have the things upon which we have
set our hearts. “_Thy_ will be done!” Do you not feel humbled and
reproached by this petition? I will speak for myself, and say that this
petition and its place in the prayer put me to utter shame. Why, our
very prayers are selfish! A secularist once said with a sneer that
“prayer was a machine warranted by theologians to make God do whatsoever
His clients want.” Have not our prayers given some ground for the sneer?
Have not our wants and interests occupied too large a place in our
petition? This is the true order in prayer—God first. This is the
petition that must dominate every other, “Thy will be done.”
Let me not be misunderstood. I am far from saying it is wrong to tell
God about our personal wishes and desires. No! Tell Him everything.
There ought to be no reserve in the conversation between a child and his
Father. I am not afraid or ashamed to tell God about my personal
affairs. I ask Him to preserve me from trouble and loss. I ask Him to
keep me safe from harm and danger. I ask Him to ward off from me
sickness and suffering. I ask Him to watch over those I love. But there
is another prayer I must learn to pray, another prayer I must learn to
pray _first_—and oh! what a lot of learning it takes—and that prayer is
this, “Thy will be done.” For it may be God’s will to send me the very
things I shrink from. He may see that it is the discipline of trouble
and loss and sickness that I need. I am but as a little child, blind and
ignorant as a little child, and when I pray for temporal gifts, I may be
only praying to my own hurt. This is the only prayer for me, for you,
for all men, “Father, Thy will be done.” We wish for success in life,
but because such a success might prove a curse and not a blessing, we
must add, “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.” We pray for
freedom from bereavement and sorrow, but because such discipline may
result in truest blessedness, we add, “Nevertheless, not my will but
Thine be done.” We pray for peace and comfort and quietness, but because
struggle and conflict may be necessary, in order to make us strong, we
add, “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.” We have not learned
to pray truly at all, until every petition in our prayers is made
subject to this one; until it becomes our chief and supreme desire that
God’s will may be done.
_Will it be hard?_ Hard? I know of nothing harder. This is the great
feat of life. You can only learn to say “Thy will be done” through
struggle and agony and heartbreak. This old Book compares the agony
through which men must pass before they learn sincerely to pray this
prayer, to the agony inflicted by the plucking out of an eye or the
cutting off of a limb. Obedience to God leads to the land of blessedness
and peace, but the gate by which we enter—the gate of self-denial—is a
narrow gate, and we have to _agonise_ to enter in. God has a will for
each of us, and His will concerning us often clashes with our own. The
desires of the flesh and of the mind hanker after earthly comfort and
wealth and ease. God’s will concerning us is, that whatever the cost and
the pain, we should be clean and honest and true. Scarcely a day passes
but our desires and the will of God for us come into violent conflict.
To surrender our own wills, to make God’s will ours, means pain. It is a
dying. It is a crucifixion. But there are one or two considerations of
which I would like to remind you, which ought to make this surrender
easier for us. This is the first:—
(1) The will we are asked to make our own is _our Father’s_ will. “Thy
will be done!” Whose will? _Our Father’s will!_ After all, it ought not
to be very difficult to obey a father’s will, to fulfil a father’s
desire, even when that will runs counter to our own, for we know there
is _love_ in the case. Remember, you are not asked to obey a despot; you
are not asked to obey a tyrant; you are not asked to obey a
slave-driver; you are asked to do the will of _your Father_—your Father,
whose love is only to be measured by the Cross of Jesus Christ. It was
the remembrance that the will He was called upon to obey was His
Father’s will, that helped Jesus in the Garden. It was a hard thing for
our Lord to say “Thy will be done,” when He knew that involved the Cross
and the Grave; for Jesus, let me say it with all reverence, had all a
man’s feelings, and He shrank from the bitter agony and shame. He would
gladly have escaped the Cross and the Tomb. “If it be possible, let this
cup pass.” Then he remembered it was His Father who was bidding Him
drink that bitter cup. That thought steadied Him, gave Him courage, made
Him strong, He was ready for anything and everything that His Father
appointed. “The cup which the Father hath given me to drink shall I not
drink it?” We, too, shall be strong to make God’s will our own, when we
remember it is our _Father’s_ will. For our Father is love—love at its
best and highest. Mr. Spurgeon tells a story about a man who had in his
garden a weather-cock which had on it this inscription, “God is Love.” A
friend seeing it asked if it was meant to imply that God’s love was as
fickle as the wind. “No,” was the reply, “I mean that from whatever
quarter the wind may happen to blow, God is still love.” Bear that in
mind—God is love; the will you are asked to obey is your Father’s will.
Then, though that will ordain for us sorrow, sickness, pain, loss, we
shall have grace to say, “Thy will be done.”
The second consideration which I would impress upon you is this:—
(2) God’s will _ever seeks our highest good_. What else could any one
expect, seeing that it is _our Father’s_ will? How we who are parents
plan and scheme and contrive in order to secure a happy and prosperous
future for our children! In exactly the same way God plans and purposes
for us. He is always thinking upon us for our good. His will, says the
Apostle, is our sanctification. It is a good and perfect and acceptable
will. The very discipline through which He sometimes calls upon us to
pass is meant to build us up in patience and purity and faith. The boy
in school is apt to regard his lessons as a hardship. He would prefer
the field and the sunshine to the school-room and the desk. But in after
years he will be thankful he did not get his own way in the days of his
youth, for he will recognise _then_ that the hours he spent over his
Algebraic problems and his Latin declensions enriched his life by
contributing to the culture of his mind. We are scholars in God’s
schools. The discipline of the school is painful sometimes; but in later
years we shall be thankful even for our sorrows and losses and
bereavements, when we see how they have enriched our lives by
contributing to the culture of our souls. Yes, it will be easier to
embrace God’s will when we realise with the Apostle that all things work
together for good to them that love God.
_Thy will be done!_ Notice, God’s will is not simply to be endured or
suffered—it is to be done. In our every-day speech we have unduly
narrowed the scope and meaning of this petition. We talk about this
petition as if it were a prayer that God would give us the grace of
_resignation_. It is in times of bereavement that this phrase leaps to
the lips of men. It is upon tombstones that it is inscribed by sorrowing
relatives. Again do not let me be misunderstood. Suffering God’s will is
embraced in the scope of this prayer. To many of us the hardest part of
all is patient submission to the will of God. The man bereft of wealth,
stripped of all his possessions, flung back again into the poverty from
which by hard and persistent effort he had emerged, needs grace to say,
“Thy will be done.” The man who languishes upon a bed of sickness, who
lies there helpless while perhaps wife and children look up to him for
bread—he needs grace to say, “Thy will be done.” Those who have parted
with some loved one, who have seen father or mother, or husband or wife
or child, hidden from them in the dark cold grave, and who come home
again to miss the well-loved face and familiar voice—they need grace to
say, while their hearts are aching and their eyes are full of tears,
“Thy will be done.” Some of you know how hard it is. You find it
impossible almost to say, as Job said, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath
taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Yes, it is hard to be
submissive and resigned, and it is out of a broken heart the prayer
often ascends, “Thy will be done.”
But this prayer is much more than a prayer for the grace of resignation
and patient submission. The petition is not “Help us to _suffer_ thy
will,” but “Help us to do it.” This is not a prayer simply for the
invalid and the mourner and the bereaved; it is a prayer also for those
who are happy and well and strong. This is not a prayer simply for our
times of trouble and our days of deep distress; it is a prayer for all
times and every day. It is not every day, nor every month, nor even
every year, that we are called upon to _suffer_ God’s will, but not a
day, not an hour passes, but _we are_ called upon to do it. Do not
narrow the scope of this prayer. You prayed this morning, “Thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven”? What did you mean by it? I will tell
you what you ought to have meant by it: “Help me, O God, to do what Thou
wouldest have me do, to be what Thou wouldest have me.” That is what the
prayer means. It means that we accept God’s plans and purposes as our
own, and resolve to realise them. You can pray no nobler prayer than
this, for in the doing of God’s will lies the secret of the perfect
life. We look at the life of Jesus—so beautiful, so pure, so perfect—and
we are lost in wonder and rapture. But the secret of that life is here:
Jesus from the beginning to the close of life was intent on doing God’s
will. He Himself let us into the secret. “I am come,” He said, “not to
do My own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me.” “My meat and
drink,” He said, on another occasion, “is to do the will of Him that
sent Me, and to accomplish His work.” When a boy of twelve He had come
to the sublime decision that every moment of His life should be spent in
doing His Father’s business. Do not commit the mistake of thinking that
it was only in Gethsemane and the Judgement Hall and on Calvary that
Christ was doing the will of God. He was doing it during those silent
years at Nazareth. He was doing it when at school, He was doing it when
He was in the carpenter’s shop, mending the tables and chairs and
ploughs of the dwellers in Nazareth. He was doing it when He preached
the Gospel of the Kingdom in Galilee. He was doing it when sharing in
the festivities at Cana, and taking part in Matthew’s farewell dinner.
He was doing it when healing the sick and comforting the lonely and
lifting up the outcast. In fact, He was never doing anything else. Every
day, every moment, Jesus was doing the Father’s will, and the result is
the only perfect life the world has ever seen. And so, in our case, the
doing of God’s will is not something confined to our times of darkness
and sorrow; the doing of God’s will is a daily and hourly endeavour.
God’s will is really _done_ by us only when, to use the Apostle’s words,
“whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, we do all to the glory of
God.” “Thy will be done on earth,” so runs the petition; the sphere in
which God’s will is to be put into effect is this earth of ours—its
business life, its public life, its social life, its family life. The
employer is doing God’s will when He treats those in his employment
justly and generously. The tradesman is doing God’s will when he buys
and sells honestly. The shop assistant is doing God’s will by being
diligent and courteous, and yet withal scrupulously straightforward and
true. The artizan is doing God’s will when he respects his employer’s
time, and does every bit of work as well as it can be done. Fathers and
mothers, brothers and sisters in the home are doing God’s will when they
strive to make home happy by their self-forgetfulness and ready
helpfulness. “Doing God’s will” means doing everything as we know God
would have us do it, making God supreme over every detail of human life.
It means buying and selling, keeping ledgers, serving at the counter,
teaching at the desk, toiling in the fields, sitting in the council
chamber, casting a vote, taking our pleasure, sharing in social joys,
and doing all this for God. This is what we pray for when we say, “Thy
will be done.”
Look at the qualifying words that follow: “as in heaven so on earth.”
Heaven supplies the pattern for earth. I have just two words to say
about the way in which God’s will is done in heaven—(1) It is done
_cheerfully_. Saints and angels find their highest joy in doing God’s
will. If earth is to be like heaven in this respect, we must obey God
cheerfully. God wants no grudging service. Our obedience must be glad,
willing, free. God’s will can not be done by us as it is done in heaven,
until we can say sincerely, “I delight to do Thy will, O my God, yea,
Thy law is within my heart.” (2) It is done by ALL. You will look in
vain in the heavenly land for the disobedient and the refractory and the
rebellious. Heaven is perfectly happy, because all its people are
perfect in their obedience. Before earth can be like heaven, God’s will
must be done by ALL. It is done to-day only by a FEW. There are
multitudes who rebel against Him. When these return to their allegiance,
the day of God will break.
_Thy will be done!_ This petition calls our attention to the most crying
and urgent need of our day, the need of a simpler and more implicit
obedience. It is not more knowledge of God’s will that we want, but
grace to put in practice what we know. What is the use of coming here
to-day to hear God’s will declared, if to-morrow in our business life,
we deliberately flout and reject it? I venture to say this, that if
to-morrow and the following days we only did what we know our Lord
desires us to do, we should revolutionise the life of this town. And
will you suffer me to remind you that it is not to those who make a
profession and parade of religion that heaven is promised, but to those
who faithfully and loyally obey. “Not every one that saith unto Me,
Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth
the will of My Father which is in heaven.”
VI
“Daily Bread”
“Give us this day our daily bread.”—MATT. vi. 11
“Give us day by day our daily bread.”—LUKE xi. 3.
The petition which we are to study together this morning opens the
second part of the Lord’s Prayer. Up to this point our petitions have
all been concerned with God’s glory and praise. We have prayed “Hallowed
be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Having thus observed
the rule, “first things first,” having sought first the kingdom of God
and His righteousness, we are now at liberty to pass on to secondary
things, and to offer up to God petitions for personal blessings. And the
first petition we are taught to offer is this, “Give us this day our
daily bread.” We begin at the very bottom. We start the list of personal
petitions with a prayer for “daily bread.”
Will you notice what a gracious light this petition throws upon the
_condescension of God_? Our Lord is the high and Holy One, who inhabits
eternity, and yet He stoops to lowly folk and lowly things. “The Lord
thinketh upon _me_.” Whatsoever concerns me is of concern to Him. “Give
me bread” is not too humble a petition to bring into the presence of the
great White Throne. A one-sided notion of the majesty of God has led men
oftentimes to feel that the ordinary little cares of a human life are
quite too insignificant and trifling for Him to notice. “God is so
busy,” they say; “He has so many things to think about, that we ought
not to trouble Him with our little anxieties and worries. Such petty
things are quite beneath the dignity of His attention.” That was exactly
how the disciples felt long ago, when they were for driving away those
mothers who had brought their little children for Christ to bless. They
felt that the great Preacher, on whose lips vast crowds hung, ought not
to be bothered about babies. They thought that Christ had so many things
of importance to think about, that it was absurd to expect Him to take
notice of little children. The same kind of feeling has possessed many
of the men who have commented on this petition. Many of the old church
fathers, and indeed many modern commentators, refuse to believe that
this is a prayer for ordinary food, for mere bread. They cannot persuade
themselves that a petition for so commonplace a thing as _bread_ could
possibly find a place for itself in the Model Prayer. This is too
trifling a request to trouble God about. So they cast about for some
other than the obvious and literal meaning of the sentence, something
which they imagine is more _dignified_, and satisfy themselves at last
by saying that bread here means _spiritual bread_, food for the soul,
the Bread of Life. But the simple and obvious meaning of the phrase is,
after all, the true one. Erasmus, the great sixteenth century Grecian,
thought a reference to physical food would be incongruous “in so
heavenly a prayer.” But far from being incongruous, the prayer becomes
more gracious and beautiful because this petition for bread is in it!
The picture of Christ, which is given us in the Gospels, is all the more
winsome for the story which tells us that He took the little children in
His arms and blessed them; and the character of God becomes all the more
beautiful when we see His love stooping even to caring for our commonest
wants. “Give us bread.” This petition asks God to supply our primary
physical wants. It is not an unworthy petition. It is not too trivial a
request to bring to God; for God is not a God simply for great crises,
supreme emergencies, tremendous catastrophes: He is a God for every day,
and for the common events of every day. Our God is, shall I say, a
Master of detail. He cares not simply for the movements of worlds and
the policies of nations. He notes the fall of a sparrow, and He counts
the very hairs of our head. Nothing is too small for God to notice; the
commonest affairs of the commonest life are matters of concern to Him.
“Give us this day our daily bread.” Will you notice!—
(1) That this prayer proclaims the fact of _our dependence_ upon God
_for the very simplest of boons_. “Give us _bread_.” At first glance
we might be tempted to think this was a poor man’s prayer; a prayer for
the man who is face to face with hunger; a prayer for the man who does
not know to-day how he is going to live through to-morrow; a prayer for
the man whose balance at the bank has been exhausted, and whose last
shilling has been spent; a prayer for the man whose cupboard is empty,
and who has nothing in basket or store. “But,” we say, “this is not a
prayer for a rich man; this is not a prayer for a man whose barns and
storehouses are full; this is not a prayer for those who are nursed in
the lap of luxury—the well-to-do, the affluent, the millionaire.” This
is a prayer for Lazarus, not for Dives. But, as a matter of fact, I do
not read that Jesus anywhere says that this is a petition the rich men
need not offer. In the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, you will find
that some of the prayers, _e.g._, the general thanksgiving and the
prayer for all sorts and conditions of men—contain petitions which may
be inserted or omitted according to the circumstances of the
congregation. Such petitions you will find printed in italics and
enclosed in brackets, and the instruction is given at the side, that
such a petition is only to be used when any members of the congregation
specially desire it. But this petition is not printed in italics. It is
not enclosed in brackets. There is no instruction at the side to say,
“This petition is to be offered by a congregation of the poor, but may
be omitted by a congregation of the rich.” Oh no! there it stands in the
body of the prayer. Before it you will find the command of Christ “When
ye pray, say, Give us this day our daily bread.” There are no exceptions
made. This is a prayer for all men, for the prince as well as the
pauper, for the rich as well as the poor—“Give us this day our daily
bread.”
And it is thus a prayer for all, because all are absolutely _dependent_
upon God. We have nothing which we have not received. Every good and
perfect gift cometh from above from the Father of Light, with whom is no
variableness neither shadow cast by turning. In God we live and move and
have our being. All men depend upon God, and they depend upon him for
everything. For life, for breath, for vigour of mind, for strength of
body, we all depend on Him. And nowhere is this utter dependence of man
upon God more clearly seen than in the matter of DAILY BREAD. The
possession of wealth is apt to blind us to the fact of our _dependence_.
Men who are rich and increased with goods are always in danger of
thinking they have need of nothing. Men whose affairs have prospered,
like the rich fool in the parable, are always prone to think themselves
secure and safe for future years, and say to their souls as he said,
“Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease,
eat, drink, and be merry.” Why, we talk ourselves about a man who has
private property which brings him in a few hundreds a year being
“independent.” Independent of what? Independent of whom? It is not
simply that wealth has a curious trick sometimes of taking to itself
wings and flying away; it is not simply that life is full of instances
of tragic vicissitudes of fortune; it is not simply that we see the
supposed possessor of millions the friend of titled lords one day,
figuring in the Bankruptcy Court the next. Even assuming that riches
when made can be kept, of whom is a man “independent”? Why, though you
had the wealth of the Rothschilds, you would still be as dependent upon
God for mere _bread_ as the meanest pauper in Christchurch workhouse.
For consider for a moment the facts of the case. All wealth in the last
resort _depends upon the produce of the soil_. In these days, when
civilisation is so complicated, this is a fact we are always in danger
of overlooking and forgetting; but it is a fact, nevertheless, all
wealth in the last resort depends upon the produce of the soil—the
simple necessaries of life. Gold is only valuable for what it can
buy—its power of purchasing what is needful for the support of life. But
supposing for one moment that the earth did not yield her increase;
supposing a summer should pass without a crop; supposing there should be
no harvest of corn or fruit; supposing the world suddenly found itself
without food, of what use would your glittering sovereigns be to you? Of
what use would your railway shares and bank shares be to you? Of what
use would your costly diamonds and precious stones be to you? You could
not live upon them! They would be as worthless as the very dust of the
street if there was nothing to buy! Yes, that is the simple truth; if
the world should wake up in the morning to find itself absolutely
without food, the man whose safe is stuffed with share scrip and whose
plate-chest is crammed with gold and precious stones, would be in just
as sad a plight as the poorest beggar in Bournemouth. In the last resort
all men depend upon the produce of the fields; and the produce of the
fields _is the gift of God_. Man cannot make food. He cannot create
bread. With all his knowledge of chemistry he cannot command a harvest.
God must GIVE it. And He gives the harvest _year by year_. Some things,
as Dr. Dods remarks, God gives us once for all—our supply of coal and
the various minerals and metals. But corn, food, and bread He gives us
year by year, as if to emphasise the fact of our dependence upon him. I
have read somewhere that when the month of August comes round the world
is each year within two months of famine. The world’s granaries at that
time contain only eight weeks’ supply of corn. How forcibly such a fact
preaches the truth of our dependence upon God! Rich and poor alike
depend for very life upon the harvest God shall give. “Give us this day
our daily bread” is a prayer for us all. It is a prayer for Job in his
prosperity quite as much as for Job in his adversity. It is a prayer for
Joseph amid the well-stocked granaries of Egypt quite as much as for
Jacob face to face with starvation in Caanan. It is a prayer for rich
and poor, for the man who has his thousands as well as the man who has
not a shilling; for we are all pensioners upon the bounty of God; what
He gives us we gather, and it is only when He opens His hands that we
are filled with good.
Now, let me pass on to speak, in the second place, of:
(2) The _modesty and simplicity_ of the request made in this prayer,
“Give us this day our daily BREAD.” “Bread” that is what is asked
for—the bare necessities of life. As T. T. Lynch quaintly puts it, “This
is a prayer for daily _bread_, not for daily cake.” And as if to
emphasise the modesty of the request, it is not for the necessities of a
lifetime, but for the necessities of _to-day_ that we are to ask. “Give
us _this day_ our daily bread.” The adjective which is translated
“daily” is a word that has caused scholars no end of trouble. It is
found nowhere else in literature, either sacred or profane, and there
have been at least thirty different meanings assigned to it. But only
two interpretations need be considered. One is that which we have in our
familiar version of the prayer, “daily bread”; the other would make the
word to mean “sufficient for my sustenance.” The old Syriac version
translates it “bread for my need.” So that you will notice that
whichever interpretation is adopted “human wants,” as Godet says, “are
here reduced to the minimum.” We are to pray for _bread;_ we are to pray
for only as much of that as will suffice for the day, or meet our
present needs. The spirit of this petition is that of the prayer of Agur
of old, “Feed me with food convenient for me.”
I cannot help feeling that our modern life, with its insatiable appetite
for wealth and its love of luxury, stands rebuked by this prayer. Men in
these days desire not simply enough for their wants; they desire more
than enough—more even than they can use. They struggle and strain that
they may get a superfluity; and the result is poverty at one end of the
social scale, and luxury, extravagance and waste at the other. Now, I am
not prepared to say that to acquire wealth is wrong. But I am prepared
to say this, and in saying it I base myself on our Lord’s own words,
wealth and the luxury it buys are perilous to the best interests of the
soul. Rome was strong and vigorous and happy while her people lived
simply, and her noblest sons thought it no shame to share in humble
manual labour. But when wealth and luxury entered in, when her populace,
despising honest toil, lived on the doles of the Emperor, and her nobles
wasted tens of thousands of pounds upon a single banquet, Rome became
weak, rotten, wretched.
On that hard, Roman world, disgust
And secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
Wealth is as perilous as ever it was. Luxury still corrupts the soul.
Plain living is most conducive to high thinking. It is easier always to
be a Christian in a peasant’s hut than in Cæsar’s household. For the
Christian life is a simple, spare—may I not say a severe life. Therefore
Christ warned us against riches when he said, “How hardly shall they
that have riches enter into the kingdom of God.” Therefore here He
teaches us to ask for simplest, barest necessaries—“Give us this day our
daily bread.”
Let me go on to notice further that in offering this prayer:—
(3) _We pray for others as well as ourselves._ How does the petition
read? “Give us this day our daily bread.” The prayer is in the plural,
not the singular. It is not “Give ME,” but “Give us” our daily bread.
Christ will not let us forget the fact of brotherhood. He will not let
us forget that we are members of a great family. He will not let us
forget what moderns call “the solidarity of the race.” We must pray _for
others_ as well as ourselves. Christ when He was on earth gave us an
improved edition of the commandments. Moses had ten commandments in his
code. Jesus reduced them to two. And the two commands in the code of
Christ were—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength,”
and second, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Now this
petition illustrates that second commandment, and embodies its spirit.
We are “loving our neighbours as ourselves” when we say “Give us!” This
is a prayer for our brother’s need, for our brother’s want. We are
remembering him, bearing his burden when we pray, “Give us this day our
daily bread.” When we uttered that prayer this morning we were praying
for the poor and needy everywhere—the poor in Bournemouth, the poor in
vast London yonder, the poor the wide world over. But, do you not see,
you cannot pray for the poor and needy and then turn a deaf ear to their
cry. The genuineness of this prayer must be proved in action. I often
ask God to bless the work of this Church, but I should simply be mocking
God if I left it there and did not at once proceed to put whatever power
and energy I possess into the work for which I have been praying. And so
I should consider I had prayed a sham prayer if, after saying “Give us
this day our daily bread,” I was not ready even at cost of sacrifice to
help to provide bread for those who lack. The gospel of charity and
mutual helpfulness is in the verse. At this blessed season appeals come
to us from all quarters on behalf of the orphan, the widow, the
friendless, and the poor. There are multitudes of our brothers and
sisters in bitter need. We have prayed “Give us this day our daily
bread,” making their cause our own. May not the true answer to that
prayer be, that God will bid us contribute to their need out of our
abundance and plenty? The best proof of the sincerity of our prayer
would be that we should go forth during this week and carry into some
desolate homes a little Christmas gladness and joy.
Yet again notice that in offering this prayer we pray:
(4) For what is _legitimately and honestly our own_. “Give us,” so runs
the petition, “our daily bread.” I do not think it is at all fanciful to
interpret this pronoun OUR, as Dr. Dods does, to mean that the bread we
pray for must be _our own_ and not another’s; that is to say, it must be
fairly earned and honestly come by. “Except a man work,” so says the
Scripture, “neither shall he eat.” The divine law is that the bread a
man eats should be bread won by his own labour. But there are plenty of
people in this world who try to live out of the labour of other people.
They are busy, as the saying is, “taking the bread out of other people’s
mouths.” They do this not simply by deception and theft and robbery—they
do it also by unfair competition, by false dealing, by bogus company
promoting, by stock-exchange gambling, by oppression, injustice and
wrong. There are those among us who devote their talents to the task of
drawing hard-earned money out of the pockets of English people without
giving value in return. They want to live and grow fat on the bread of
others, not on bread of their own earning. But what we have to pray for
is _our own_ bread, bread honestly and fairly earned. That little word
“our” stands there to warn us against all dishonesty, trickery, fraud,
injustice. The man of business must be able to say that every sovereign
of his profits has been gained by fair and honest trading. The artisan
must be able to say that every penny in his week’s wage has been earned
by good and faithful labour. The master who pays his men less than their
due, the man who wastes his master’s time, the shopkeeper who resorts to
sharp practices—in fact, any one who strives to get hold of money
otherwise than by fairly and squarely earning it, are all sinning
against the spirit of this prayer which teaches us to say, “Give us this
day _our_ daily bread.”
Just one word more before I close. I have said that the primary and
essential reference of this petition is to bread, this material bread
that nourishes the life of our bodies. But we need not exclude
altogether from our thoughts that spiritual bread, that Bread of Life,
to which the old Fathers saw reference here. Man does not live by bread
alone. Man is not a mere animal. God breathed into man the breath of
life, and he became a living soul. And the soul needs fit nourishment
even as the body does, and that fit nourishment the soul finds in Jesus
Christ. He is the “Bread of Life.” This petition is also the right
prayer for the hungering soul, “Give us this day our daily bread,” for
our souls need a daily supply. The supply of yesterday will not do for
to-day, any more than yesterday’s dinner will suffice us for to-day’s
work. You cannot live on the memory of past spiritual experiences. You
cannot live on the remembrance of blessed fellowship with your Lord held
long ago. You cannot live on the recollection of mercies received months
or years back. For every day you need a fresh gift of grace. The manna
of old only held good for one day. It had to be gathered fresh every
morning. The manna of one day grew corrupt and worthless before the
next. So it is with the bread of our souls. You must get it fresh every
day. For every day you must get new stores of grace. This is the prayer
for you and me, “Give us this day our daily bread.” GIVE! yes, this also
is a gift. You cannot buy “the Bread of Life.” Its price has never been
quoted in the markets. No money could purchase it. But what no money
could purchase is offered to you and me for nothing. God never sells.
God is a king, He gives. Buy? No, you cannot buy, Can you buy pardon?
Can you buy peace? Can you buy redemption? Can you buy heaven? No, you
cannot buy; but what you cannot buy God will _give_. Listen, “Ho, every
one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money,
come ye, buy and eat, yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and
without price.” Listen again, “Everyone that thirsteth let him come and
take of the water of life freely.” Listen yet again, “The gift of God is
eternal life.” Giving! This is royal giving. Hungering souls come to
God—come to God for the Bread of Life. There is in the Father’s house
enough and to spare; why hunger ye any more? Why spend your money for
that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not?
Your father is waiting to give you all you need. He is only waiting to
hear you say, “Evermore give us this bread.”
VII
“Forgiveness”
“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our
debtors.”—MATT. vi. 12.
“And forgive us our sins; for we ourselves also forgive every one
that is indebted to us.”—LUKE xi. 4.
My exposition of the Lord’s Prayer brings me this morning to speak a few
simple words upon the two great fundamental facts of the Gospel—man’s
need of forgiveness, and God’s willingness to bestow it.
The petition immediately preceding this one is the prayer for daily
bread. We are absolutely dependent upon God for our very existence; so
our Lord teaches us to ask God for the food—the material bread that is
to sustain our physical life from day to day. But “man shall not live by
bread alone.” There is another hunger than hunger of the body—there is a
hunger of the soul; and what the soul hungers for is pardon,
forgiveness, and the peace forgiveness always brings. So when we have
prayed for bread we have not come to an end. We have another prayer to
offer. We have a larger request to make. We have a greater boon to
ask—“Give us this day our daily bread, AND forgive us our sins.”
The question has often been asked, “Is life worth living?” By some the
question is answered without reservation in the affirmative, by others
in the negative. For myself, I am not prepared to answer either “Yes” or
“No.” My reply would be, “It all depends.” Life, it seems to me, is not
worth having if it be not lived in the sunshine of God’s smile. Life is
not worth having if God’s face is turned away from us. Life is not worth
having if our sins interpose themselves like a black frowning cloud
between us and the Eternal Light. To make life worth living, life must
be made happy and blessed and peaceful, and before life can be made
happy that barrier of sin must be removed, and we must walk in the light
of God’s countenance. The prayer for bread is a prayer for _life_—for
mere _existence_. But mere existence may be a doubtful boon. To some the
prolongation of life simply means the prolongation of misery. Why should
men pray for the continuance of a life which is radically wretched?
There are multitudes in our world more inclined to pray for swift death
than for long life. They say, with Charles Kingsley, “The sooner it’s
over, the sooner to sleep.” No, it is not mere life, it is not life at
any price, but it is the blessed, the peaceful life we want. So we go on
to pray for a gift greater far than the gift of bread; we go on to pray
for that which alone can make life tolerable, welcome, really worth
living; we go on to pray for mercy, pardon, reconciliation, peace.
“Father, forgive us our sins.”
“Sin” is an ugly word, a word that stands for the ugliest, most terrible
fact in the universe of God. The world was fair and bright till sin
entered it; all its wretchedness is the result of sin. Man was pure and
happy till sin entered; his foulness and broken-heartedness are the
result of sin. The Bible looks at this terrible fact of sin, and fails
to find a single word large enough to describe it in all its many
aspects of horror. It employs various words for this one terrible thing
according as it views it from different standpoints. Looking at it from
the standpoint of the true end of human life, sin is a “missing of the
mark.” The chief end of man is to glorify God. The sinner fails in that.
He misses the mark. Sin from this point of view means _failure_,
_defeat_, _disaster_. The Bible looks at sin from the standpoint of Law,
the Divine Law written in the nature and on the conscience of man, and
brands sin as _lawlessness_. Every single sin is a _trespass_, a
transgression, and overstepping of the bounds. The Bible looks at sin
from the standpoint of prudence, and stigmatises sin as _folly_—the most
stupendous and senseless of all follies. The sinner is a man who, for a
few moments of delirious excitement, barters away his immortal soul. The
Bible looks at sin from the standpoint of God, and sin then becomes
disobedience, or, as in the text quoted from Matthew, it becomes
“_debt_.”
Perhaps we are too apt to think of sin only in its effect upon
ourselves. We think of the blight it brings upon human character and the
ruin it makes in human lives. It is terrible to us because it always
brings a curse with it. We fear and dread sin, not always because of its
own intrinsic horror, but because of the penalties it inevitably
entails; so that all too often our very fear of sin has its roots in
selfishness, and springs out of self-love. I want to say to you that we
shall never see sin in its naked horror, we shall never see it in its
awful hatefulness, until we look at it from another standpoint. We sin
not against ourselves alone, but _against_ God. David, in the great
crime of his life, had sinned against Uriah, whose blood he had caused
to be shed, and against Bathsheba, the partner of his sin, and against
his own soul; but when under the faithful speech of Nathan he was
brought to see that awful sin of his in its true light, he lost sight of
himself, and Bathsheba and Uriah; he could only think of the God he had
flouted and outraged and grieved, and this was the agonised cry that
broke from his lips, “Against _Thee_, Thee only have I sinned and done
this evil in _Thy_ sight.” Then comes in the enormity of sin. It is sin
_against God_! Let me illustrate what I mean from our ordinary human
life. Say that a son who has been loved at home and has been the pride
of his mother’s heart, falls into disgrace and is brought up in the
police courts charged with some shameful deed. If such a son has any
sensibility at all, his sin will appear hateful to him, not so much
because it has brought disgrace and loss of liberty to himself, but
because away at his home a mother’s heart is well nigh broken with shame
and grief. That will be the keenest stab of pain such a lad will suffer.
It is the picture of his heart-broken mother that will make him loathe
and despise and hate his sin. It is then we shall see the hatefulness of
sin, when we occupy David’s standpoint, and say, “Against Thee, Thee
only have I sinned.” Even though sin entailed no loss to the sinner,
involved no penalty, brought with it no curse, it would remain still
utterly loathsome and hateful if we only realised that every sin of ours
caused grief and pain to the heart of the eternal God, our loving Father
in heaven.
Now that is the point of view from which sin is regarded in this prayer.
It is _against God_! Matthew uses the word “_debt_.” As Dr. Morison
says, “When we sin there is something in our act for which we become
_liable_ to God. Formerly He had a claim upon us; now He has a claim
_against_ us.” The sins of our past history are included in this word
“debt.” They have not done with us, though we try to persuade ourselves
that we have done with them! Ah! what a relief it would be if we could
only be sure that sin when once committed was over and done with for
ever! But it is not so! These sins of ours enrol themselves in a great
book of accounts; not one is omitted; not one is overlooked; not one is
forgotten. Do we try to persuade ourselves that somehow or other the
sins of the past have been lost sight of? Do we try to flatter ourselves
that they have been buried in the dust of the years? That is a vain
hope. There are no mistakes, no omissions in the eternal account books.
The ink of those books never fades. There every sin is enrolled. There
you see them—a long, black, damning list. That is your DEBT. Sins of
commission—the evil words we have spoken, the evil deeds we have done,
they are all there. Sins of _omission_ are there as well. In fact, I
fancy that it is to sins of this class that the word “debt” specially
points. “Debt” is something we OWE. In relation to God it is something
we owed to Him and failed to pay. So it stands here for the many things
we ought to have done, which we have left undone.
There are some of us who perhaps flatter ourselves that we have never
committed any flagrant sin. We are not blasphemers; we are not
drunkards; we are not profligates; we have never committed theft or
adultery or murder; we have never been guilty of any crime that has
brought us to public shame; and on the strength of that we are half
inclined to think that the name “sinner” is not applicable to us. But
notice how this word “debt” lays hold of even the most respectable of
us. There are certain things we _owe_ to God. We owe Him reverence. Have
we given it to Him? We owe Him obedience. Have we given it to Him? We
owe Him service. Have we given it to Him? We owe Him our heart’s best
love. Have we given it to Him? We owe Him the first place in our
thoughts and affections. Have we given it to Him? We owe Him complete
self-surrender. Have we given it to Him? Ask yourselves these questions.
Probe your hearts with them. Face them frankly and honestly. Have you
given God perfect obedience, the best love of your hearts, the first
place in your lives? Oh, how such questions humble us! How they cover us
with shame and confusion! Looking back over my own life, I can see how
my years have been marred and disfigured by my failure to give to God
what He has a right to expect. I can see that I have not reverenced Him
as I ought; that I have not obeyed Him as I ought; that I have not
placed Him first, as I ought. When I begin to ask myself if I have done
what God expects from me, my pride all disappears, my heart is pierced
as with sharp swords, my self-satisfaction is torn to shreds, and I am
humbled to the dust; for as I look back every day tells its tale of
things left undone which I ought to have done, and these sins of
omission rise up before me—a mountain load of debt which I owe to God.
DEBT! what a terrible word that is to every true and honest man! There
are multitudes who would prefer to bear privation and poverty rather
than run into debt. The workhouse is bad enough, but better the
workhouse than “debt.” But will you suffer me to say that “debtors” we
all of us are? “We have all sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
We have come short—we have given God less than His due; He has a claim
against us; we are “in debt” to Him. And the debt is one that cannot be
expressed in the figures and coinage of earth. It is a debt that money
can never pay. I have heard sometimes of men who, when they have found
themselves in financial difficulties, have called their creditors
together, and have said to them, “If you will but give me time, I will
pay you all in full”; and from time to time we read in our newspapers of
honourable men discharging with interest debts they had incurred years
before. Can we do something like that with this debt we owe to God? Can
we work it off in the days and years that are to come? I cannot hold out
to you any hope of doing that. Work as hard as you like to please God
to-day, when the day is done, what will you have to say? Just this, “We
have been unprofitable servants—we have only done what we ought.” Only
what we ought—there is no margin, nothing over, which you can apply to
the reduction of the old debt. The arrears of obligation are untouched.
May I venture to say that, before night comes, by some sin or other, you
will have added to the debt? It would be as easy to bale the ocean dry
as to hope by your own efforts to pay this debt. It would be as
easy—nay, it would be infinitely easier—to count the sands of the
seashore than to remove this mountain load of obligation. Try your best,
and you will fail as Paul failed, as Luther failed. Spite of your best
efforts the debt—that crushing debt—goes on increasing. Well, what can
you do? _You_ can do nothing! _Sin_ past and present, _sin_ of
commission and omission, _sin_—that long, black, damning record that
stands against your name in the eternal account book—what can you do
with it? How can you remove it? How can you blot it out? How can you
bury it out of sight and mind? How can you erase out of the book that
fatal story? You say you must have something done, or that debt will
strangle you. What can you do to be delivered from this body of death?
My brother, you can do nothing; you cannot pay the debt, you cannot blot
out the sin, you cannot erase the record from the book. Do your best,
and at the end you will be “in debt.” But you say, “Can nothing be done?
Am I, then, doomed to ruin and to death? Is there no way of paying this
debt?” Here is the gospel in a nutshell. Here is the good news, old as
the centuries, but new in your ears and mine to-day. Something _can_ be
done! _You_ can do nothing, _I_ can do nothing, but God, the God against
whom we have sinned, He can do everything. He can remove that mountain
load of debt. He can blot out that fatal record in the book. He can
erase every entry. He can bury our sins out of sight for ever. We can
never pay that overwhelming debt; but HE, He can give us our account
back with “Settled” written at the bottom of it. Oh yes, here is the
Gospel: Sin in man, but forgiveness in God; debt in man, but mercy in
God. “Where sin doth abound there grace doth much more abound.”
Listen, as to what God will do with your sins and mine! He will cancel
the debt! He will blot out the handwriting that was against us and put
it out of the way, nailing it to the Cross of Christ! He will erase that
fatal record in the book! He will remember our sins against us no more.
As far as the east is from the west, so far will He remove our
transgressions from us. Listen to His invitation and His gracious
promise, “Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though
your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow, though they be
red like crimson they shall be as wool.” This is the Gospel—this is the
good news. There is something greater, stronger even than the sin of
man, and that is the grace of God. I can see a limit to human sin. I can
see no limit to the Divine mercy.
Plenteous grace with Thee is found,
Grace to pardon all my sin.
Yes, there is mercy with God! There is forgiveness with Him! The wonder
of the world still is that the God against whom we have sinned is the
One who will take our sin away.
All souls that were, were forfeit once,
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy.
That remedy was the Cross of Christ. It is He, the sinless Jesus, who
has cancelled the debt. “He died for us according to the Scriptures.” It
is His pierced hand that shall blot out the record of our sins. It is in
His life-blood that we are to be washed free from every stain. It is at
the foot of His Cross our sins are to be buried. Christ the sinless one
is the Lamb of God. He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,
and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. This is the
Gospel. There is a debt against us we can never hope to pay. But God for
Christ’s sake will cancel it. There are sins which crush us with their
weight and burden, but God for Christ’s sake will take them all away.
There are stains upon us—black and deep and foul; but the blood of Jesus
Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. Just as the snow descends from
heaven and hides all the grime and filth of earth underneath its mantle
until the whole surface is one pure glistening white, so God will let
His mercy cover us; He will clothe us in righteousness until every stain
is covered and we stand forth whiter than snow. God was in Christ
reconciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning unto them their
trespasses. The Cross proclaims that there is forgiveness with God. And
I want to preach the free glad Gospel of the Cross to you this morning.
I want to say to you sin-stricken, perishing, dying men and women, there
is forgiveness with God. There is nothing which His mercy cannot do.
There is no sin too great, no guilt too black for Him to pardon. A poor
criminal in Scotland, as he went forth to his place of execution kept
crying out, “He is a great Forgiver. He is a great Forgiver.” Yes, He is
a great Forgiver! Let us men and women, ruined and undone by sin, praise
God, for He is a great Forgiver. His tender mercy is ever upon us. In
God’s mercy is our hope. And the Cross is the pledge of pardon which
stoops to the lowest and most vile. The Cross, the Cross—the bitter,
shameful Cross; the glorious, radiant Cross; our most jubilant songs
arise from the Cross—
E’er since by faith I saw the stream
His flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.
Well! and what was the _price of pardon_? I can tell you what it cost
God. It cost God the death of His own, His only Son. The Cross was
necessary to make pardon possible. “Without shedding of blood there is
no remission.” That is what your forgiveness and mine cost God, it cost
Him the blood of His Son. But what will it cost us? What will it cost?
It will cost us _nothing_. As I said, when speaking of the previous
petition, God does not sell, God _gives_. Some have tried to buy
forgiveness by fasts and vigils and penances and rigid self-discipline.
That is how Luther, when he was a monk at Erfurt, and Thomas Bilney,
when he was a student at Cambridge, tried to obtain pardon and peace.
Some have even believed that pardon was to be bought with money, so the
boxes of the Indulgence sellers in Germany were filled with the coins of
men and women who wanted forgiveness. But pardon is not to be bought,
neither with money nor with penances nor vigils nor fasts. Forgiveness
is to be had for nothing. Pardon is given without money and without
price. All that is required is that you should _ask_ for it. “Ask and ye
shall receive.” Zacchæus asked, and he received it. Mary of Magdala
asked, and she received it. The thief on the cross asked, and he
received it. Come and ask, and you too shall receive it. Why will ye be
stricken any more? Why will ye die, O house of Israel. Come and ask, and
you shall hear the answer fall on your ears like sweetest music, “Son,
daughter, thy sins are forgiven thee, go in peace.” That is what this
petition teaches us to do. It bids us come and ask. For Jesus recognizes
that we are all of us “debtors.” But the debt will be remitted for the
asking. Therefore He teaches us to pray “Forgive us our trespasses.” The
ground of forgiveness is not in ourselves. It is not because of our own
merit that the debt is cancelled. We are saved not by works, but by
grace. We are forgiven because of the boundless love that fills the
heart of God, the love that found expression in the Cross of Christ. Our
confidence lies in the fact that God is our Father. Let us trust the
Father! Let us believe the message of the Cross! Let us not hang back
through doubt or fear! Let us go with boldness to the throne of grace
just as we are—guilty, sin-stained, and vile. He will cast none of us
out, but He will forgive us freely; His anger will be turned away and He
will comfort us, and peace like a river shall flood our troubled souls!
Let me now go on to ask you to notice for a moment the qualifying
clause: “As we also have forgiven our debtors,” says Matthew. “For we
ourselves also forgive every one that is indebted to us,” says Luke. I
think these words are meant to be in the first place _words of
encouragement_. If man can forgive, much more can God. They remind us of
that splendid verse, “If ye being evil know how to give good gifts unto
your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give
good things unto them that ask Him.” We have known men who have
generously and freely forgiven great wrongs committed against them. We
are here told to think of the way in which even men can forgive in order
that we may have faith to believe that God, who is infinitely more
loving and pitiful than the best of men, can and will forgive to the
uttermost. But these words are also words of _solemn warning_. Sometimes
they make the prayer die upon our lips, for they require the forgiving
spirit to be in us before we ask forgiveness from God. Do you notice how
this prayer, which soars to the heights, enforces also the simple
everyday moralities? Look at this petition, “Forgive us our sins, _for
we ourselves also forgive every one that is indebted to us_.” “For we
ourselves also forgive every one.” Is that true? Have you forgiven every
one? Are there no grudges that you cherish? Are there no enmities in
your heart? Is there no one against whom you cherish malice or ill-will?
If there is ill-will against anyone in your heart, can you pray this
prayer? Can you say to God, “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive
every one?” You remember how, in the striking story of the two debtors,
our Lord condemned the man who could ask God to forgive him that awful
debt of sin, and yet cherish an unforgiving spirit against his
neighbour. Oh what a warning, a solemn warning, there is in this
petition, “If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your
Father forgive your trespasses.” Or look at the way Matthew puts it,
“Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors.” I want to ask you
a plain question: “Would you really like God to forgive just in exactly
the same way as you forgive your enemies?” Do you think you would? Why,
is not our forgiveness all too often grudging and half-hearted? Do we
not often cherish the remembrance of the offences? Do we not say, “I
will forgive, but I cannot forget?” Would you like God to forgive you
like that? I can never forget the words which Augustus Hare writes on
this passage. He pictures an unforgiving man praying this prayer, and
this is what he says: “O God, I have sinned against Thee many times from
my youth up till now. I have often been forgetful of Thy goodness. I
have neglected Thy service. I have broken Thy laws. I have done many
things utterly wrong against Thee. Such is my guiltiness, O Lord, in Thy
sight; deal with me, I beseech Thee, even as I deal with my neighbour.
He has not offended me one-tenth, one-hundredth part as much as I have
offended Thee. But I cannot forgive Him. Deal with me, I beseech Thee, O
Lord as I deal with him. He has been very ungrateful to me, though not a
tenth, not a hundredth part as ungrateful as I have been to Thee. Yet I
cannot overlook his ingratitude. Deal with me, O Lord, I beseech Thee,
as I deal with him. I remember and treasure up every trifle which shows
how ill he has behaved to me. Deal with me, I beseech Thee, O Lord, as I
deal with him. I am determined to take the very first opportunity of
doing him an ill turn. Deal with me, I beseech Thee, O Lord, as I deal
with him.” Oh, what a terrible curse such a prayer is! But, brethren,
may it not be that, if we cherish unkind feelings in our hearts, if we
hug secret hates and enmities, when we ask God to forgive us, in exactly
the same way as we forgive others, we too may be invoking not blessing,
but doom upon our own heads. Before we can pray this prayer we need the
spirit of forgiveness in our own hearts. Emerson says of Abraham
Lincoln, that “his heart was as big as the world, but there was no room
in it for the memory of a wrong.” Such must be our spirit also, the
spirit that Jesus showed when on the Cross he prayed, “Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do.” May God help us even now to
forgive from our hearts our brothers their trespasses, then can we draw
near with boldness to the throne of grace and pray, “Father, forgive us
our sins, for we ourselves also forgive every one that is indebted to
us.”
VIII
“Temptation”
“And bring us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil
one.”—MATT. vi. 13.
“And bring us not into temptation.”—LUKE xi. 5.
Forgiveness is the beginning not the end, the first step not the last in
the Christian life. In the Gospel according to John, we read a story
about a poor woman who was dragged half dead with shame into the
presence of Christ, and charged before Him with a nameless crime. Her
enemies crowded round clamouring for her instant punishment. But Jesus,
just because He was so pure and good, was infinitely tender and pitiful.
He had no harsh judgment to pronounce upon this poor, shame-stricken
woman.
When her brutal accusers, made cowards by their own consciences, slunk
away one by one, leaving the sinner alone with her Saviour, His word to
her was one of pure compassion, “Neither do I condemn thee.” There was
pardon for her black sin, forgiveness for her shameful past. But having
forgiven her, Christ did not let her go without laying a command upon
her. This forgiven woman was not at liberty to return to her old life of
folly and shame. “Go,” said Jesus, dismissing her, “sin no more.” That
is an illustration of Christ’s unvarying methods with sinners.
Forgiveness—full, free forgiveness—is to be had for the asking. Bring
your sinful, shameful past before Him; you will hear no bitter, angry
words of reproach from His lips. The words you will hear will be words
of tenderest compassion. Bring your terrible debt before Him and tell
Him of your dire, your abject, your utter poverty. Say to Him, “Lord, I
have nothing to pay,” and He will say to you, “All this thy debt, I
freely forgive.” Bring your burden of guilt and shame to Him. He will
not spurn you from Him though He is so pure and you so unclean, but with
words of pity and love He will welcome you, and take the burden of your
guilt and shame clean away. Yes, Christ will freely forgive you. He will
have mercy upon you. He will abundantly pardon. But forgiveness of the
past is not all. What of the future? Well, as to that future the Master
will lay upon you also the old injunction, “Go, sin no more.” For the
forgiven man cannot return to his old life of sin. After forgiveness
comes the life of struggle and conflict against the world, the flesh and
the devil. After the blotting out of the shameful past comes the earnest
striving to keep the record of the future clean. Forgiveness is not the
end, but the beginning. After forgiveness comes all that our fathers
meant by the old term, “sanctification.” After forgiveness comes all
that John means when he tells us to purify ourselves even as He is pure;
all that Paul means when he tells us “to work out our own salvation.”
The struggle, the conflict, the battle comes after pardon has been
bestowed. For when Jesus whispers into our ears the gladsome message,
“Thy sins are forgiven thee,” He lays upon us also the command, “Go, sin
no more.”
What I have been saying up to this point illustrates the connection
between this petition and the one we studied together last Sunday
morning. “Forgive us our debts” is a prayer that God will blot out the
record of _past_ sin. “Lead us not into temptation” is a prayer for
protection in the _future_. For I want you to notice that the man who
has truly repented of his sin wants not simply the past to be blotted
out, but he wants grace to shun sin in the days to come. He wants not
only to be delivered from the _penalty_ of sin, but he also longs to be
emancipated from its _power_. Let not the freeness of forgiveness ever
lead you to think lightly of sin. There were some in the very early days
of the Church who interpreted this freeness of forgiveness as a licence
to sin. They said, “What matters it? God will forgive.” Nay, they even
thought, or at any rate they tried to persuade themselves, they were
doing a favour to God by continuing their old wicked practices, as the
greater their sin was, the finer the opportunity for the display of
God’s forgiving love. They sinned, so they said, that grace might
abound. The Church has been troubled and harassed by many a heresy in
the course of the centuries, but the most damnable, the most
soul-destroying that ever assailed it, was this Antinomian heresy, which
bade men sin on because God was ready to forgive, which taught that sin
was light, trivial, cheap, because pardon was free. Sin light? Sin
cheap? Sin trivial? Brethren, look at the Cross of Jesus Christ! Measure
the enormity of the sin by the sacrifice of the Cross! It cost God the
life of His own Son to deliver us from it.
There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin,
He only could unlock the gate
Of heaven and let us in.
Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid! for by
every sin of ours we crucify the Lord afresh, and put Him to an open
shame. The programme of the Christian life is not sin and pardon, sin
and pardon, sin and pardon, day after day, month after month, year after
year. The programme of the Christian life is pardon, sanctification,
holiness. After pardon comes the daily struggle with sin, until its
power in our souls is broken, and we come off more than conquerors,
through Him who loved us. Not that I would imply that any one on this
side the grave attains to a state of sinless perfection, or that the
time will ever come on earth when the prayer, “Forgive us our sins,”
will be out of place on our lips. But the goal set before us is the
perfect life; towards that goal we must daily press, and though on earth
we may never attain to it, yet to-day ought to see us nearer to it than
yesterday, and to-morrow ought to find us nearer than to-day. There is
something radically wrong with us if sin has as great a power over us
to-day as it had, say, ten years ago. Repentance is never genuine and
sincere unless it creates within us a hatred and loathing of sin. We
have never been truly forgiven if we can go on sinning the old sins day
after day; for we never hear Christ say to us, “Thy sins are forgiven
thee,” without hearing Him add this charge, “From henceforth sin no
more.”
But the command _is a hard one to obey_. In a world so full of trial and
temptation, so full of seductions and enticements to evil, how hard it
is for poor, weak, frail men to obey the command, “Go, sin no more.” In
a world that presses in upon us on every side, that spreads its
glittering prizes before our eyes to tempt us, how hard it is to be
unworldly, to hold earth’s best gifts cheap, while we set our affections
on things above! In a world so full of uncleanness and impurity, how
hard it is to keep one’s garments clean and unspotted! Hard, did I say?
Nay, impossible. With the world as it is, and man as he is, the task is
impossible. To obey that command, we need help and strength. The task is
too difficult for us. It is more than we can do in our own native
strength. So we cast the burden back again upon our Lord and say to Him,
“Master we would fain obey Thee: we would fain live without sin; but we
are weak, and the world is strong—too strong for us. Lord, undertake
Thou for us. Have pity on our weakness, and bring us not into
temptation.” There it stands, a prayer for the _future_; a cry to God
that He will not suffer the world to overcome us, and drag us down again
to sin.
Now you will notice that this prayer recognises the fact that—
(1) The _world is full of peril to the Christian, because it is full of
temptation_. The word translated “temptation” in my text really means
“testing, trial.” Never a day passes but something happens which puts
our moral strength to the test. God does not “tempt” in the sense of
inciting to evil; God TESTS. The presence of evil in our world, the
incitements to evil that abound, looked at from God’s standpoint, are
tests—tests of character, tests of moral strength. But these incitements
to evil appeal to weakness and evil in our own hearts, and so to us they
become “temptations.” And of such “temptations” our world is full.
Bunyan described the Christian life as a journey, but it is a journey
through a very dangerous country. There are snares and pit-falls around
us on every side. The path leads between a ditch on one side and a
quagmire on the other, and along the route are the Slough of Despond,
and By-Path Meadow, and Doubting Castle, and the Mount of Error, Broad
Way Gate, and Dead Man’s Lane, and Vanity Fair. Yes, the path is one
that is surrounded with peril, and to stray from it is a very easy
matter. That path is the path of life, and these pitfalls and snares and
by-paths that endanger the unwary traveller on every hand, are the
temptations that beset a man in life, and lure him to his ruin and
death. The old story of the fight between the English and the Scotch at
Bannockburn says that Bruce, on the night before the battle, honeycombed
the ground in front of his army with pit-falls, each of which contained
a hidden stake, and then covered them up again with the green turf. In
the morning the English cavalry, when it charged upon the Scottish
troops, found that the ground, which looked so firm and solid was
deceitful and treacherous, and, falling into these hidden pitfalls,
horse and rider met their fate. Does life to you look in prospect like a
firm, safe, solid road? I tell you that at every step you take you need
to beware of some secret pitfall. Does life appear in prospect to any of
you like the still, glassy sea of a summer’s noon? I tell you that
beneath that shimmering, smiling surface lie hidden the dark and
treacherous rocks which have meant wreck and death to many a voyager.
Oh, yes, human life is beset with temptation. No one is exempt from it.
No moment of the day is free from it. Incitements to sin abound.
Invitations to enter the broad way meet us at every turn. Why is it
parents are so anxious, when their children are sent for the first time
to fight life’s battles for themselves in a large town? I will tell you.
It is because they know that temptations abound. There is temptation in
the glare and false gaiety of the public-house. There is temptation in
every painted shameless face seen upon our streets. There is temptation
in the companionship of foolish and godless friends. There is temptation
in the coarse and filthy speech of associates. There is temptation in
unclean literature. There is temptation in business, in the home, at
work, at play. Nay, where is it temptation does not lurk? It penetrates
everywhere. It found its way into Paradise of old, and Adam yielded to
its power. Who is free from it? Not one. Wherever man is, there
temptation is. There is no escape from it. Men try to avoid infection,
in case of an outbreak of disease, by removing from the infected
district. So men of old tried to escape the assaults of temptation by
leaving the busy world and fleeing into solitude. But it was all in
vain. Temptation followed them to their retreats, and many were the
fierce struggles an old saint like St. Anthony had to wage in the secret
of his cell. Oh, the world is full of temptation. Every lot has its own
fierce tests for character. Business life has its temptations; home life
has its temptations. The life of hard grinding toil has its temptations;
the life of ease and leisure has its temptations also. Never a day
passes but in some way or other an appeal is made to our lower, baser
nature, and we are urged to yield. The old Greek legends speak of the
syrens—creatures half women, half fish—who lived upon the rocks and
could sing the most ravishing songs. So entrancing was the music that
who ever heard it was irresistibly drawn to the singers. But it was woe
to them; for the rocks whereon the syrens lived were strewn with the
bones of dead men who had listened to their song and yielded to its
fascination. That syren’s song is still being sung, and every mariner on
life’s main hears it. The world, the flesh, and the devil are the syrens
of to-day. Who has not heard their song? Wherever we are, whatever we
are doing, we hear its luring, tempting strains. God grant, brethren, we
may not yield—for yielding still means destruction and death.
(2) This verse implies the WEAKNESS of man. “Bring us not into
temptation,” into trial, into testing, because we are so prone to break
down under the trial. The fact that temptations abound would not matter
very much if we were proof against them. It is because we ourselves are
so prone to yield that temptation is terrible. To take a spark to green
wood would not do very much harm. But to bring temptation upon us is
like applying flame to dry shavings or a match to gunpowder. The attack
of temptation from without is made formidable by the weakness and
treachery within. It is because we know our own weakness, it is because
we know how liable we are to break down under any severe test, that we
pray, “Bring us not into temptation.” I am simply stating a matter of
fact and observation when I say that there is in all of us a bias toward
sin, an inclination toward evil. We talk lightly sometimes of the old
doctrine of “original sin.” But surely it expressed a truth that we dare
not ignore. There is a bias in the human heart toward sin. It is easier
for us to do wrong than to do right. That was the truth our Lord meant
to convey when He said the path of evil was a broad way, while the road
to life was a narrow path. To do evil is easy; you have only to shout
with the crowd and swim with the stream. But to do right is hard; you
must swim against the current, you must dare to stand alone. And it is
just this that gives temptation its power and makes it terrible. It
accords with our own inclinations. The passions and desires of the flesh
second its efforts. The devil finds his best ally in the lusts and
weaknesses of a man’s own heart. There is no man safe from temptation.
There is no one who can boast that he is strong enough to resist every
allurement. There is in all of us some weakness of the soul, and
temptation will assail us just at the weakest point; it will find the
unfortified place and concentrate its attack upon that; it will find the
joints in our harness and point the poisoned arrow there. The old Greek
story says that Achilles, the great hero of the Trojan war, was dipped
while he was yet a child in the waters of the Styx by his mother,
Thetis, in order to make him invulnerable. And the result of that plunge
was that every part of Achilles’ body was proof against wounds with the
exception of the heel by which his mother held him, and which had not
been submerged in the waters. For many years, as a result, Achilles
escaped unhurt, but at last the poisoned arrow of the Trojan Paris found
the weak spot and inflicted the death wound there. So sin and temptation
attack us where we are weakest. They appeal to our inclinations, our
passions, our lusts; they find out the weak spot. I can only discover
One Man in the history of the whole world who was proof against
temptation, and that was the Perfect Man, Christ Jesus Himself. But as
for everyone else, the best, the bravest, the noblest, surprised by some
temptation, betrayed by some weakness, have fallen into sin. Do not say,
brethren, that this petition is a prayer for the weak! Do not say it is
a prayer for the timid and the cowardly! It is a prayer for us all.
Peter very likely thought that there was no need for him to pray this
prayer. Perhaps in his heart he longed for an opportunity to be given
him of showing how strong and brave he was. Deny his Lord? No! not
though all the world forsook Him! No! not though it meant death to be
faithful! Well, the night did not pass without bringing an opportunity
of putting his boasted strength to the test. But how badly Peter came
out of the trial! Would you recognise the proud boaster of a few hours
before in the swearing, blaspheming denier at cock-crow? And we have
many an example in the old Book, beside that of Peter, to warn us
against over-confidence. Abraham, whose faith is commended in Scripture,
lost all his faith in Egypt. Moses, the man who was renowned for his
meekness, lost his temper when the children of Israel murmured. David,
the sweet singer of Israel, the man after God’s own heart, was swept by
his lust into an act of foulest wickedness. And these examples are
enshrined in the pages of this old Book, to bid us beware of
over-confidence, and not to boast ourselves in our strength. Pride ever
cometh before a fall. There is weakness in all of us. To the strongest
of you here this morning, to you who perhaps think yourselves beyond the
reach of temptation, let me repeat the old Bible warning, “Let him that
thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” It is the knowledge of our
own weakness that makes temptation terrible. We distrust ourselves. We
look back over past years and see the number of times we have fallen,
the number of times we have yielded to the fascination of the world’s
syren song. We remember, too, that when we did escape it was so as by
fire; it was through pain and agony. We remember how hard the struggle
was, and how near we were to yielding. And the remembrance both of our
falls and our escapes makes us afraid. We feel that our safety lies in
never hearing those fatal strains again. So, conscious of our own
weakness, and yet desiring not to offend our heavenly Father again by
our sin, we make this our prayer, “Bring us not into temptation.”
(3) Let me ask you to notice that this petition illustrates _the spirit
of true Christian courage_. It is not courage, but foolhardiness that
courts danger. It is not courage that risks life and limb in an utterly
stupid, needless, bootless task; it is folly. It was not courage that
made that mad youth climb the sheer face of the cliff at Folkestone the
other day, it was mere senseless bravado. True courage will keep away
from danger; true courage will only incur risk and peril when duty
demands. Let us learn this lesson. You young men learn this lesson. It
is not courage to venture into doubtful places; it is not courage to
unite with questionable companions; it is not courage to peer into
unclean books; it is not courage to spend your evenings in the
public-house; it is not courage to dally with the intoxicating cup; it
is not courage to frequent the theatre, with its evil associations, to
accustom yourselves to gaze upon the indecencies and to listen to the
pruriencies too often heard upon the stage. It is not courage to court
company where the filthy jest and the coarse laugh and the brutal
blasphemy are common; it is not courage to see how near you can go to
the edge of the precipice without falling over. No, this is not courage,
unless you are prepared to say that it is courage that makes the silly
moth flutter round the flame until at last it flutters into it. Courage?
No! it is not courage—it is wicked, mad bravado! Your safety, brethren,
against sin lies in being shocked at it. True courage looks at the
incitements to evil with which life abounds and confesses, “I am afraid
of them,” and then makes this petition its prayer, “Father, bring us not
into temptation.”
But it may be that in spite of our fears, and in spite of our prayers,
God may see fit to bring us into temptation, into some fierce trial that
shall test our moral strength. “God,” we read in Genesis, “did tempt,
_i.e._ did test, Abraham.” He put Abraham’s faith and obedience to a
searching trial. Jesus, we read, was driven _by the Spirit_ into the
wilderness, to undergo those forty days of fierce testing. We shrink
from these fierce trials, but they are good for us, for if resisted they
knit thews and sinews of strength in our souls. We are better for
temptation resisted and overcome than we should have been if we had
never been tempted at all. It is in conflict with temptation that God’s
Victoria Cross—the Cross “for valour”—is to be won. Let us ever remember
this—there is nothing sinful in being tempted. We sin only when _we
yield to temptation_. Well, supposing that God does see fit to let us
enter into temptation, to let our strength and courage be tested in
fierce, grim, deadly conflict with sin and evil, what shall we pray for?
We will pray then, “Deliver us from the evil one.” We will pray to Him
to help us, that we may not sin against Him by yielding. We will ask Him
to clothe us with the whole armour of God, and to put in our hands the
sword of the Spirit, and so enable us to withstand the assaults of the
evil one, and having done all things to stand. There shall be on our
part no foolish rushing into temptation; nay, remembering our own
weakness we will pray, “Father, lead us not into it.” But if temptation
comes upon us when we are in the path of duty, then we can look up to
him, claim His presence with us in the battle, and say, “Deliver us from
the evil one.” We say “Let us not be overcome in the struggle. Let us
not be beaten in the fight. Suffer us not to fall away from Thee.
Deliver us, by Thy mercy deliver us, good Lord.” And God will deliver
us. I say nothing about the man who rushes into temptation of his own
free will; but of the man upon whom temptation comes when he is in the
line of duty I am bold to say, “God will deliver him.” His promises are
here in this book. Here they are—“God is faithful, who will not suffer
you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptations
make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it.” “The
Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation.” “I will keep
you also in the hour of temptation.” Christian had a fierce, long, and
stubborn fight with Apollyon, but he won the victory at last, and was
able to shout exultingly, “Now, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through Him that loved us.” Oh, take comfort, you who feel
the force and keenness of temptation. No conflict need end in defeat. No
struggle need end in disaster. Pray to your Father, “Deliver us from the
evil one.” By prayer link yourself to God’s Almightiness, take Him with
you into the conflict, and every fight shall end in victory, and every
struggle in triumph, and these very temptations when vanquished and
overcome shall help to make you a strong man in Christ, and you will be
able then to realise the truth of that word of the Apostle James,
“Blessed is the man that endureth temptation, for when he hath been
approved he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord promised to
them that loved Him.”
“Deliver us from the evil one,” that must be our prayer. Do you remember
that sentence in Christ’s great intercessory prayer? “I pray, not that
Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep
them from the evil.” We are in the world, and we have no right even to
wish to leave it. It is the coward who runs away, locks himself up in
some monastic cell, and leaves the world to perish. Our place is IN the
world. But the world is full of evil, evil which presses itself, forces
itself upon us at every turn. From that evil we must ask God to keep us.
“Deliver us from evil.” We have been forgiven. We want now complete
deliverance from sin. We want to be emancipated from its power. We want
to be rid of its foul stains. We want to grow in purity, truth and
grace, and to become daily more like our Lord. Oh, this is the prayer of
the Christian life “Deliver us from evil!” When shall this deliverance
come? Perhaps not completely here—though the chains shall be loosened.
But absolute deliverance shall come in the beautiful homeland.
Where we shall see His face,
And never, never sin,
And from the rivers of His grace
Drink endless pleasures in.
IX
THE MODEL PRAYER
“After this manner therefore pray ye.”—MATT. vi. 9.
A fortnight ago we completed our study of the petitions that make up the
Lord’s Prayer. For the prayer as it fell from the lips of Christ ended
with that petition, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil.” The great doxology, which in the Authorised Version you will find
at the close of Matthew’s account of the prayer, and which has become so
familiar to us by its constant repetition in the public use of the
prayer, formed no part of the original prayer at all, but must be
regarded as a liturgical addition made by the Church in later years. It
is wanting in the great Greek MSS., and in some important versions, and
has been quite properly omitted from our revised English Bible. The
probability is that the words “For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and
the glory, for ever, Amen,” were added to the prayer in its public
recitations, much in the same way as we to-day sing, “Glory be to the
Father,” at the end of the Psalms.
It is not my intention, therefore, to make any comment upon that
doxology with which, in our daily use, we end the prayer, but rather to
call your attention to some thoughts on prayer in general suggested by
the study of this prayer which Jesus gave to His disciples in answer to
their request that He would teach them how to pray. First of all, let me
say that I believe Jesus gave this prayer to His disciples _for use_,
that is to say, He contemplated their using _this very form of words_.
The circumstances of its origin seem to place this beyond dispute. This
is the record Luke gives, “And it came to pass, as He was praying in a
certain place, that when He ceased, one of His disciples said unto Him,
‘Lord, teach us to pray, even as John also taught his disciples.’ And He
said unto them, ‘When ye pray, say Father.’” In face of those words,
“When ye pray, say,” there is, as Dr. Dods puts it, “no getting past the
evident precept here delivered, that we ought habitually to use these
words.” “Then our Lord,” some one will remark, “sanctions the use of
forms of prayer.” I am here, I know, on the very edge of a question
which is one of the most difficult to deal with, and one on which Free
Churchmen differ strongly among themselves. Discussions upon the use of
liturgical forms in worship crop up periodically at various assemblies,
but my experience of them is, that they generate a good deal of heat
without giving much light. In our Congregational Churches free prayer is
the general, almost the invariable practice. Our forefathers were so
shocked at the formalism of the liturgical worship of the Established
Church, that in the interest of true spiritual worship they rejected
forms altogether; some even going to the length of objecting to the use
of the Lord’s Prayer in the public services of the sanctuary. Their
dislike and distrust of forms we have to a large extent inherited. But
the fact that many people are asking the question to-day whether our
services would not be all the more helpful if a little of the liturgical
element were imported into them, is proof that there are those amongst
us who think that our fathers in their revolt against formalism went to
the opposite extreme, and by their complete rejection of forms injured
themselves and impoverished the public worship of the sanctuary. Of
course formalism is fatal to true worship. But the use of forms is not
formalism. Formalism is the abuse of forms. But the fact that forms get
abused is no reason for discarding them altogether, any more than the
fact that liberty sometimes, and with some people, degenerates into
licence is a reason why we should all abjure our freedom. In fact, a
certain amount of form is absolutely necessary. As some one has put it,
“there may be occasionally form without life, but there can never be
life without form.” No one, of course, proposes to do away with free
prayer. The abolition of free prayer from our services would, I am
convinced, do irreparable injury to the spiritual life of our Free
Churches. Our freedom in prayer has been our glory and our proud
privilege, and that freedom we must jealously guard. But there are in
our congregations men and women of differing temperaments. There are
those amongst us—and I am speaking now out of the experience I have
gathered during my ten years’ ministry—who would find simple forms a
help to them, and the question is whether the interests of a
congregation _as a whole_ would not be better met by an order of service
which should combine free and liturgical prayer, rather than by an order
which should confine itself rigidly to the one, to the utter exclusion
of the other. Further into the question I do not mean to enter. I shall
have achieved my object if I have brought you to see that the question
is really one of _Christian expediency_. There is no question here of
right or wrong. About our perfect right to introduce forms if we choose
there can be no doubt. But a thing may be lawful and yet not expedient.
And that is the point we have to settle with reference to liturgical
forms. Is it expedient to introduce them? Would they enrich our worship.
Would they edify the worshipper? Would they help us to come with
boldness to the throne of grace? If they would, then adopt them. But if
they would tend to formalism, if their effect would be to make us _say
our prayers_ instead of _praying_, or if their introduction would create
bitterness or breed dissension in the Church, then better for ever
remain without them.
This form of prayer, however, stands quite apart from every other. It
has a sacredness all its own. It is _the Lord’s_ prayer. With perfect
appropriateness this form finds a place in all our services. I welcome
the public use of the Lord’s Prayer for various reasons. First of all,
it is the _one perfect prayer_. In its six brief petitions it seems to
include everybody and everything. Men are always partial and one-sided
and our human prayers are partial and one-sided also. They express the
needs of some and not of others. But this brief prayer is like its
Author, it is complete. Jesus was the Son of Man, the Universal Man.
Everybody finds his counterpart in Jesus. And the prayer He gave is an
universal prayer. It voices the cry of every heart, the need of every
soul. Then I welcome the use of this prayer _for its associations_. What
sacred associations cluster around it! It is sacred to us because of Him
who first gave it. This is _our Lord’s_ prayer, His gift to the world.
Then it is sacred to us because of the Saints, Apostles, Prophets,
Martyrs, who have used it. This prayer is a link that binds all the
Christian centuries together. Peter and John and Paul and James used to
kneel down and say, “Our Father.” Those early Christian assemblies in
the upper room in Jerusalem, Lydia’s house in Philippi, and the
Catacombs at Rome, used the very words we repeated together just now.
This prayer is an heirloom in the Christian family, handed down from one
generation to another, and binding the “whole world by chains of gold
about the feet of God.”
Then for many of us it has associations of a still tenderer kind. It
comes to us burdened with memories of the past. Dr. Guthrie, when lying
on his dying bed, used often to ask the members of his family to sing
him a bairn’s hymn. Those childish hymns used to carry him back to the
old home and the long ago. Vanished days came back again as he listened
to the songs he learned first at his mother’s knee. What those “bairn’s
hymns” were to Dr. Guthrie, that, this prayer is to most of us. It is
the prayer in which we learned our first lessons of Christian truth. The
first words we were taught to lisp were the words “Our Father.” When we
pray this prayer we are back again in the far-off days of childhood. We
remember our fathers and mothers, some of them in glory now, who would
have given their lives for our souls. And as we think of those happy
days, we become children once again, and becoming children we become fit
to receive the blessing; for except we turn and become as little
children we shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven. So this form
of prayer becomes a vehicle of grace. Tender, sacred, universal, it
lifts us near to God and rightly finds a place in all the public
services of the sanctuary.
But this prayer is much more than a form to be used—_it is also a model
for all our prayers_. The disciples came to Jesus asking Him to teach
them how to pray. This prayer is the answer to that request. Instead of
giving the disciples a string of rules and principles, instead of
delivering a long discourse on the _theory_ of prayer, Jesus did what
was infinitely more helpful, He gave them a pattern prayer. He taught
them this exquisite prayer of six petitions, and said to them, “After
this manner, therefore, pray ye.” This prayer is a model prayer, both as
to manner, and order, and spirit.
(1) It is a model as to manner. I will note here only three
characteristics of the prayer. First, will you notice its _brevity_! The
prayer that teaches to pray contains only six short petitions. The
measure of a prayer is not its length, but its sincerity and
earnestness. One good friend reminded a minister who was accustomed to
take full time in his preaching, that there was all the difference in
the world between the _length_ of a sermon and the _strength_ of a
sermon. So there is all the difference between the length of a prayer
and the strength of a prayer. We are not heard for our much speaking.
The priests of Baal cut themselves with knives and cried from morn until
the dusk of evening, “Baal, hear us.” The mob at Ephesus shouted out for
the space of two hours, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” But the
command is laid upon us, “Be not ye like unto them.” We are to avoid all
vain repetitions. If prayers were valued according to their length, then
there would be no prayers to compete with the prayers of the Pharisee.
But the publican, who could only stammer out that one heart-broken
petition, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” went to his home justified
rather than the Pharisee, in spite of his long prayers. We have not yet
got rid of the notion that there is some kind of merit in “long
prayers.” We need to learn the truth Augustine wishes to enforce when he
says that much speaking is one thing and much praying quite another.
There can be much prayer in very little speech. In fact, the shortest
prayers are always the most eloquent. Need abbreviates prayer. Want will
make prayer direct and pointed. Two of the most moving prayers I know of
in the whole range of Bible literature are, the prayer of the poor
Canaanitish woman who had a sick daughter, and whose prayer consisted of
three simple words, “Lord, help me”; and the prayer of that dying thief
on the cross, who, in the agony of mortal pain, cried, “Lord remember me
when Thou comest in Thy kingdom.” Brethren, it does not require many
words to pray. No one need restrain himself from prayer because, like
Moses, he is slow of tongue. You can compress a great prayer into the
compass of a brief sentence. As Thomas Binney used to say, “A little
prayer may bring a large answer, and bring it soon, if sincerity and
faith give it wings. A short word may be made long enough to span the
distance between earth and heaven if it be struck off from the living
heart.”
Secondly, notice the _directness_ of the prayer. How pointed the
petitions are! There are no waste words! Here are a number of distinct
and definite requests, each of which is stated clearly and plainly in a
few simple words. There is no need for a cloud of words in prayer; there
is no need of elaborate and highflown language; there is no need to beat
about the bush. Let us be direct in our prayers! I am afraid we have got
into the habit of using a kind of conventional language in prayer, as if
God did not understand our common talk! The ideal prayer, however, is
that which makes our request known to God with the same frankness and
directness with which a child makes known his wants to his parents. Look
at these petitions! Each of them is a prayer for a distinct and definite
object. We want the same directness in our prayers to-day. As Matthew
Henry quaintly puts it, “We should always strike at the white.”
Then notice the _simplicity_ of the prayer. It is a prayer so simple
that a little child can understand it! This is not a prayer reserved for
the use of the learned, the cultured, the highly educated. This is a
prayer everybody can understand. Wayfaring men, though fools, need not
err therein. But its simplicity is not shallowness. People are apt to
make mistakes. They think that profound which is simply turbid and
muddy. They think, on the other hand, that which is pellucid and clear
must of necessity be shallow. But the turbid pool is often very shallow,
while those waters of crystal clearness contain depths no plummet can
fathom. It is so with this prayer. It is simple, exquisitely simple, so
simple that even a child can grasp its meaning. But what depths these
simple sentences hide! Have we not been learning Sabbath by Sabbath
something of the grandeur and sweep of the prayer? We have been trying
during these past Sabbaths to explore the length and breadth, the height
and depth of this prayer, but have you not felt, as the preacher has
felt, that after all our exploring, there are yet undiscovered regions
in this prayer?
There’s a deep below the deep, and a height beyond the height,
And our hearing is not hearing, and our seeing is not sight.
Profundity is always a matter of idea, not of language. A man is not
profound because he revels in polysyllables. The profoundest thought can
be clothed in the simplest language. Shall I tell you the profoundest
truth ever uttered by mortal man? Here it is, “God is love.” Yet the
words are the simplest that language could afford. It is so exactly with
this prayer. Beneath these simple sentences there are depths we have
never fathomed. That is why this prayer will never be among the childish
things which we can put away. Added years will only increase our sense
of its sweep and depth and beauty.
(2) Now let me pass on to say that this prayer is a model _as to Order_.
I need not dwell long upon this, for I have already drawn attention to
it in the course of my exposition. But let me repeat again that this
Model Prayer teaches us that in all true prayer God’s glory will occupy
the first place. Before ever a word is said about personal needs our
Lord teaches His disciples to pray that God’s name may be hallowed, that
His kingdom may come, and that His will may be done on earth as it is
done in heaven. It is “after this manner” we are to pray always. That is
the order we must observe in all prayers, “First things first.” First
God’s glory, then our personal wants. This is the hardest lesson of all
to learn. The great feat of life is accomplished when we have learned to
prefer God’s will to our own, and when we honestly seek first His
kingdom and His righteousness. And yet this hard lesson we must all
learn if we are to find strength and comfort in prayer. People talk
about “unanswered prayers!” There ought to be no unanswered prayers. I
make bold to say that to the man who has learned the true secret of
prayer there are no unanswered prayers. It is the man who has forgotten
the true order who complains of unanswered prayers. It is the man who
has thought more of his own personal desires than of the glory of God
who complains that Heaven is deaf to his cry. The man who has learned to
seek first the kingdom of God, who sincerely desires that God’s will may
be done, that man never talks about unanswered prayers. All his prayers
are richly and graciously answered. He asks and receives, he seeks and
finds, he knocks and the door is always opened. If you put the emphasis
in the wrong place by laying stress on your own desires, you will be
troubled by “unanswered prayers”; but if you put God first, if you
desire His will may be done, what-e’er betide, you will never miss the
blessings, but you will find in your own experience the old promise
still true, “If we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us.”
(3) Let me ask you to notice that this prayer is a _model as to Spirit_.
After all, the power of a prayer depends not upon the words we use, but
upon the spirit in which we offer it. “According to your faith it shall
be unto you.” Our prayers may be beautiful in their language, correct in
their theology, brief, simple, direct; and yet they may rise no higher
than the ceiling of the room in which they are uttered. Yes! even this
Pearl of Prayers, as uttered by some of us, may be nothing but a barren
form. Before prayer becomes living, throbbing, vital, before it can take
to itself wings, before it can reach the ear of God, we must pray in the
spirit. And the spirit which alone gives prayer its efficacy and power,
is the spirit of childlike confidence and trust. This Model Prayer is
full of that spirit. Notice how it begins, “_Our Father_” That implies
that we come to God as His children, believing He is readier to give
good things to us than we are to give good things to our children. It is
“after that manner”—in childlike faith in God’s love—that we are always
to pray. The measure of our trust in God will be the measure of our
power in prayer. “According to our faith it shall be unto us.” Christ’s
prayers were prevailing prayers, because He had a perfect faith. He
called God “Father,” and He honoured God’s Fatherhood by placing an
absolute and utter trust in Him. We want the Christ spirit to make our
prayers effectual. It is not the words that are wrong, it is not the
order that is amiss, it is the faith that is lacking. If only Christ’s
spirit of loving confidence in God were breathed into our prayers, how
irresistible they would be. Dr. Stanford, in his little volume on the
Lord’s Prayer, quotes those exquisite lines, in which George Macdonald
applies the legend of how the boy Jesus once made some clay birds fly to
the prayers men offer—
My prayer-bird was cold—would not away,
Although I set it on the edge of the nest,
Then I bethought me of the story old,
Love-fact, or loving fable, thou knowest best,
How, when the children had made sparrows of clay,
Thou mad’st them birds, with wings to flutter and fold;
Take, Lord my prayer in Thy hand, and make it pray.
Our prayers are often like those clay-birds. They do not rise. They are
lifeless and dead. But how they would soar if only the spirit of Jesus,
the spirit of childlike faith in God, were breathed into them! “Our
Father,” the first words of the prayer, teach us the spirit in which we
should pray. Is there anything we want more than faith, confidence,
trust in God? If we are straitened at all, we are straitened not in Him,
but in ourselves. If no mighty works are being done in our midst, it is
not because God’s arm is shortened, it is because of our unbelief. We
have not yet realised the meaning and the power of that word “Father.”
We have not yet realised that He loves us with an everlasting love. We
have not yet realised that He is willing to do for us exceeding
abundantly above all we can ask or think. So we are hungering when there
is abundance within reach. We are weak when we might be strong. We are
feeble when we might be resistless. We live at a poor, dying rate, when
there is abundant life to be had for the asking. What do we need more
than faith? A simpler trust in the power and love of God would make us
irresistible. If we had faith as a grain of mustard-seed, we might say
to the greatest mountain of difficulty, “Remove hence,” and it should
remove, and nothing would be impossible unto us.
This prayer is the Model Prayer. It is a pattern which we are to
imitate. And the pattern Man of Prayer was Jesus Himself. Prayer was His
vital breath. After the labours of the day were over, Jesus was
accustomed to steal away to some lonely hill, where He would spend the
night in quiet, loving fellowship with God. Days of toil were followed
by nights of communion, nights of communion prepared Him for days of
toil. The example of Jesus enforces the Apostolic precept, “Pray without
ceasing.” And Jesus illustrates also the blessing of prayer. What great
answers were given to His petitions. As He was praying at His baptism,
the heavens opened. As He was praying on the Mount, His countenance was
altered, and His raiment became white and glistening, and there came to
Him Moses and Elijah, to converse with Him and speak of His departure,
which He should accomplish at Jerusalem. As He was praying in the garden
that last bitter night, there came an angel from heaven, strengthening
Him. Yes; Jesus knew the comfort, the strength, the calm that only
prayer can give! We may know them too. Let us be instant in prayer, and
we, too, shall be brave and peaceful and strong, for it is as true
to-day as it was when Isaiah penned the words, that they who wait upon
the Lord renew their strength; they mount up with wings, as eagles, they
run and are not weary, they walk and are not faint.
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3/6
THE MESSAGES OF THE BIBLE
Edited by FRANK KNIGHT SANDERS, Ph.D., Woolsey Professor of Biblical
Literature in Yale University, and CHARLES FOSTER KENT, Ph.D., Professor
of Biblical Literature and History in Brown University. Super royal
16mo, cloth, red top, 3s. 6d. a vol. (To be completed in 12 Volumes.)
I. THE MESSAGES OF THE EARLIER PROPHETS.
II. THE MESSAGES OF THE LATER PROPHETS.
III. THE MESSAGES OF ISRAEL’S LAW GIVERS.
IV. THE MESSAGES OF THE PROPHETICAL AND PRIESTLY HISTORIANS.
V. THE MESSAGES OF THE PSALMISTS.
VIII. THE MESSAGES OF THE APOCALYPTICAL WRITERS.
IX. THE MESSAGES OF JESUS ACCORDING TO THE SYNOPTISTS.
X. THE MESSAGES OF JESUS ACCORDING TO THE GOSPEL OF JOHN.
XI. THE MESSAGES OF PAUL.
XII. THE MESSAGES OF THE APOSTLES.
Volumes VI. and VII. will appear at intervals.
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_EMMA JANE WORBOISE’S NOVELS._
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A book that all parents should place in the hands of their
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=Ourselves and the Universe.= By J. BRIERLEY.
=4d.= Net
=Holy Christian Empire.= By Rev. PRINCIPAL FORSYTH, M.A., D.D., of
Hackney College, Hampstead. Crown 8vo, paper cover, 4d. net.
“Rich in noble thought, in high purpose, in faith and in courage.
Every sentence tells, and the whole argument moves onward to its
great conclusion. Dr. Forsyth has put the argument for missions in a
way that will nerve and inspire the Church’s workers at home and
abroad for fresh sacrifice.”—_London Quarterly Review._
=The Unique Class Chart and Register.= By Rev. J. H. RIDETTE. Specially
arranged and absolutely indispensable for keeping a complete record of
the scholars according to the requirements of the Meggitt Scheme of
Sunday-school Reform. Linen cover, 4d. net.
=3d.= Net
=School Hymns, for Schools and Missions.= Words only. Compiled by E. H.
MAYO GUNN. Cloth limp, 3d.; cloth boards, 6d.; music, 3s.
=2d.= Net
=The Sunday Afternoon Song Book.= Containing 137 Hymns. For use at
“Pleasant Sunday Afternoons,” and Other Gatherings. Compiled by H. A.
KENNEDY, of the Men’s Sunday Union, Stepney Meeting House. Twentieth
Thousand, 2d.; music, 1s.
“Contains 137 hymns, the catholic character of which, in the best
sense of the term, may be gathered from the names of the authors,
which include Tennyson, Ebenezer Elliott, Whittier, G. Herbert, C.
Wesley, Thomas Hughes, J. H. Newman, Longfellow, Bonar, and others.
While the purely dogmatic element is largely absent, the Christian
life, in its forms of aspiration, struggle against sin and love for
the true and the good, is well illustrated.”—_Literary World._
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
Text that was in bold print is enclosed by equals signs (=bold=).
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