The Prince of Preachers Charles
Haddon Spurgeon has been called England's greatest contribution
to the spread of the gospel in the
19th century.
One of his contemporaries said that the chief
secret of Spurgeon's attractiveness was the fact that
in every sermon, no matter what the text
or the occasion, he explained the way of
salvation in simple terms.
Spurgeon's messages remain one of the great treasure
houses of Christian literature, still bringing the light
of the gospel and the comfort of the
scriptures to hungry souls long after the preacher
has passed into glory.
This is Charles Kelch inviting you to listen
to a message from the Prince of Preachers.
C.
H.
Spurgeon preached this message on September 12, 1858,
in the music hall of the Royal Surrey
Gardens.
It is entitled, The Fatherhood of God.
The text is found in Matthew chapter 6
and verse 9.
Our Father, which art in heaven?
I think there is room for very great
doubt whether our Saviour intended the prayer, of
which our text forms a part, to be
used in the manner in which it is
commonly employed among professing Christians.
It is the custom of many persons to
repeat it as their morning prayer, and they
think that when they have repeated these sacred
words, they have done enough.
I believe that this prayer was never intended
for universal use.
Jesus Christ taught it not to all men,
but to His disciples, and it is a
prayer adapted only to those who are the
possessors of grace and are truly converted.
In the lips of an ungodly man, it
is entirely out of place.
Doth not one say, Ye are of your
father the devil, for his works ye do?
Why, then, should ye mock God by saying,
Our Father, which art in heaven?
For how can he be your father?
Have ye two fathers?
And if he be a father, where is
his honour?
Where is his love?
Ye neither honour nor love him, and yet
you presumptuously and blasphemously approach him, and say,
Our Father, when your heart is still attached
to sin, and your life is opposed to
his law, and you therefore prove yourself to
be an heir of wrath, and not a
child of grace.
O, I beseech you, leave off sacrilegiously employing
these sacred words, and until you can in
sincerity and truth say, Our Father, which art
in heaven, and in your lives seek to
honour his holy name, do not offer him
the language of the hypocrite, which is an
abomination to him.
I very much question also whether this prayer
was intended to be used by Christ's own
disciples as a constant form of prayer.
It seems to me that Christ gave it
as a model whereby we are to fashion
all our prayers, and I think we may
use it to edification and with great sincerity
and earnestness at certain times and seasons.
I have seen an architect form the model
of a building he intends to erect of
plaster or wood, but I never had an
idea that it was intended for me to
live in.
I have seen an artist trace on a
piece of brown paper, perhaps, a design which
he intended afterwards to work out on more
costly stuff, but I never imagined the design
to be the thing itself.
This prayer of Christ is a great chart,
as it were, but I cannot cross the
sea on a chart.
It is a map, but a man is
not a traveller because he puts his fingers
across the map, and so a man may
use this form of prayer, and yet be
a total stranger to the great design of
Christ in teaching it to his disciples.
I feel that I cannot use this prayer
to the omission of others.
Great as it is, it does not express
all I desire to say to my Father
which is in heaven.
There are many sins which I must confess
separately and distinctly, and the various other petitions
which this prayer contains require, I feel, to
be expanded when I come before God in
private, and I must pour out my heart
in the language which His Spirit gives me.
And more than that, I must trust in
the Spirit to speak the unutterable groanings of
my spirit when my lips cannot actually express
all the emotions of my heart.
Let none despise this prayer.
It is matchless, and if we must have
forms of prayer, let us have this first,
foremost, and chief.
But let none think that Christ would tie
His disciples to the constant and only use
of this.
Let us rather draw near to the throne
of the heavenly grace with boldness, as children
coming to a father, and let us tell
forth our wants and our sorrows in the
language which the Holy Spirit teacheth us.
And now, coming to the text, there are
several things we shall have to notice here.
And first I shall dwell for a few
minutes upon the double relationship mentioned, our father
which art in heaven.
There is sonship, father.
There is brotherhood, for it says, our father.
And if He be the common father of
us, then we must be brothers, for there
are two relationships, sonship and brotherhood.
In the next place, I shall utter a
few words upon the spirit which is necessary
to help us before we are able to
utter this.
The spirit of adoption, whereby we can cry,
our father which art in heaven.
And then, thirdly, I shall conclude with the
double argument of the text, for it is
really an argument upon which the rest of
the prayer is based.
First, our father which art in heaven is,
as it were, a strong argument used before
supplication itself is presented.
First, the double relationship implied in the text.
We take the first one.
Here is sonship, our father which art in
heaven.
How are we to understand this, and in
what sense are we the sons and daughters
of God?
Some say that the fatherhood of God is
universal, and that every man, from the fact
of his being created by God, is necessarily
God's son, and that therefore every man has
a right to approach the throne of God
and say, our father which art in heaven.
With that I must disagree.
I believe that in this prayer we are
to come before God, looking upon Him not
as our father through creation, but as our
father through adoption and the new birth.
I will very briefly state my reasons for
this.
I have never been able to see that
creation necessarily implies fatherhood.
I believe that God has made many things
that are not His children.
Hath He not made the heavens and the
earth, the sea and the fullness thereof?
And are they His children?
You say these are not rational and intelligent
beings.
But He made the angels, who stand in
an eminently high and holy position.
Are they His children?
Unto which of the angels said He at
any time, Thou art my son?
I do not find, as a rule, that
angels are called the children of God, and
I must disagree with the idea that mere
creation brings God necessarily into the relationship of
a father.
Doth not the potter make vessels of clay?
But is the potter the father of the
vase or of the bottle?
No, beloved, it needs something beyond creation to
constitute the relationship.
And those who can say, Our Father, which
art in heaven, are something more than God's
creatures.
They have been adopted into His family.
He has taken them out of the old
black family in which they were born.
He has washed them and cleansed them and
given them a new name and a new
spirit and made them heirs of God and
joint-heirs with Christ, and all this of
His own free, sovereign, unmerited, distinguishing grace.
And having adopted them to be His children,
He has, in the next place, regenerated them
by the Spirit of the living God.
He has begotten them again unto a lively
hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead.
And no man hath the right to claim
God as his Father unless he feeleth in
his soul and believeth solemnly through the faith
of God's election that he has been adopted
into the family of God which is in
heaven and earth and that he has been
regenerated or born again.
This relationship also involves love.
If God be my Father, He loves me.
And, oh, how He loves me!
When God is a husband, He is the
best of husbands.
Widows, somehow or other, are always well cared
for.
When God is a friend, He is the
best of friends, and sticketh closer than a
brother.
And when He is a father, He is
the best of fathers.
Oh, fathers, perhaps you do not know how
much you love your children.
When they are sick, you find it out,
for you stand by their couches and you
pity them as their little frames are writhing
in pain.
Well, like as a father pitieth his children,
so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.
You know how you love your children, too,
when they grieve you by their sin.
Anger arises, and you are ready to chasten
them, but no sooner is the tear in
their eye than your hand is heavy, and
you feel that you would rather smite yourself
than smite them.
And every time you smite them, you seem
to cry, Oh, that I should have thus
to afflict my child for his sin!
Oh, that I could suffer in his stead!
And God, even our Father, doth not afflict
willingly.
Is not that a sweet thing?
He is, as it were, compelled to it.
Even the eternal arm is not willing to
do it.
It is only His great love and deep
wisdom that brings down the blow.
But if you want to know your love
to your children, you will know it most
if they die.
David knew that he loved his son Absalom,
but he never knew how much he loved
him till he heard that he had been
slain and that he had been buried by
Joab.
Precious in the sight of the Lord is
the death of His saints.
He knows then how deep and pure is
the love that death can never sever, and
the terrors of eternity never can unbind.
But, parents, although you love your children much
and you know it, you do not know
and you cannot tell how deep is the
unfathomable abyss of the love of God to
you.
Go out at midnight and consider the heavens,
the work of God's fingers, the moon and
the stars which He hath ordained, and I
am sure you will say, What is man,
that thou shouldst be mindful of him?
But more than all, you will wonder not
at your loving him, but that while he
hath all these treasures, he should set his
heart upon so insignificant a creature as man.
And the sonship that God has given us
is not a mere name.
There is all our Father's great heart given
to us in the moment when He claims
us as His sons.
But if this sonship involves the love of
God to us, it also involves the duty
of love to God.
O heir of heaven, if thou art God's
child, wilt thou not love thy father?
What son is there that loveth not his
father?
Is he not less than human if he
loveth not his sire?
Let his name be blotted from the book
of remembrance that loveth not the woman that
brought him forth and the father that begat
him.
And we, the chosen favorites of heaven, adopted
and regenerated, shall not we love him?
Shall not we say, Whom have I in
heaven but thee?
And there is none upon earth that I
desire in comparison with thee.
My Father, I will give thee my heart.
Thou shalt be the guide of my youth.
Thou dost love me.
And the little heart that I have shall
be all thine own forever.
Furthermore, if we say, Our Father, which art
in heaven, we must recollect that our being
sons involves the duty of obedience to God.
When I say, My Father, it is not
for me to rise up and go in
rebellion against his wishes.
If he be a father, let me note
his commands and let me reverentially obey.
If he hath said, Do this, let me
do it, not because I dread him, but
because I love him.
And if he forbids me to do anything,
let me avoid it.
There are some persons in the world who
have not the spirit of adoption, and they
can never be brought to do a thing
unless they see some advantage to themselves in
it.
But with the child of God there is
no motive at all.
He can boldly say, I have never done
a right thing since I have followed Christ
because I hoped to get to heaven by
it, or I have never avoided a wrong
thing because I was afraid of being damned.
For the child of God knows his good
works do not make him acceptable to God,
for he was acceptable to God by Jesus
Christ long before he had any good works.
And the fear of hell does not affect
him, for he knows that he is delivered
from that and shall never come into condemnation,
having passed from death unto life.
He acts from pure love and gratitude.
And until we come to that state of
mind, I do not think there is such
a thing as virtue.
For if a man has done what is
called a virtuous action because he hoped to
get to heaven or to avoid hell by
it, whom has he served?
Has he not served himself?
And what is that but selfishness?
But the man who has no hell to
fear and no heaven to gain, because heaven
is his own and hell he never can
enter, that man is capable of virtue.
For he says, Now for the love I
bear his name, what was my gain I
count my loss.
I pour contempt on all my shame and
nail my glory to his cross, to his
cross who loved and lived and died for
me who loved him not, but who desires
now to love him with all my heart
and soul and strength.
And now permit me to draw your attention
to one encouraging thought that may help to
cheer the downcast and Satan-tempted child of
God.
Sonship is a thing which all the infirmities
of our flesh and all the sins into
which we are hurried by temptation can never
violate or weaken.
A man hath a child.
That child on the sudden is bereaved of
its senses.
It becomes an idiot.
What a grief that is to a father
for a child to become a lunatic or
an idiot and to exist only as an
animal, apparently without a soul!
But the idiot child is a child, and
the lunatic child is a child still.
And if we are the fathers of such
children, they are ours, and all the idiocy
and all the lunacy that can possibly befall
them can never shake the fact that they
are our sons.
Oh, what a mercy when we transfer this
to God's case and ours!
How foolish we are sometimes!
How worse than foolish!
We may say, as David did, I was
as a beast before thee.
God brings before us the truths of His
kingdom.
We cannot see their beauty.
We cannot appreciate them.
We seem to be as if we were
totally demented, ignorant, unstable, weary, and apt to
slide.
But thanks be unto God, we are His
children still.
And if there be anything worse that can
happen to a father than his child becoming
a lunatic or an idiot, it is when
he grows up to be wicked.
It is well said, children are doubtful blessings.
I remember to have heard one say, and
as I thought not very kindly, to a
mother with an infant at her breast, Woman,
you may be suckling a viper there.
It stung the mother to the quick, and
it was not needful to have said it.
But how often is it the fact that
the child that is hung upon its mother's
breast when it grows up brings that mother's
gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.
Oh, sharper than a serpent's tooth to have
a thankless child, ungodly, vile, debauched, a blasphemer.
But Mark, brethren, if he be a child,
he cannot lose his childship, nor we our
fatherhood, be he who or what he may.
Let him be transported beyond the seas, he
is still our son.
Let us deny him the house, because his
conversation might lead others of our children to
sin, yet our son he is and must
be.
And when the sod shall cover his head
and ours, father and son shall still be
on the tombstone.
The relationship never can be severed as long
as time shall last.
The prodigal was his father's son when he
was amongst the harlots and when he was
feeding swine.
And God's children are God's children anywhere and
everywhere, and shall be even unto the end.
Nothing can sever that sacred tie or divide
us from his heart.
There is yet another thought that may cheer
the little faiths and feeble minds.
The fatherhood of God is common to all
his children.
Ah, little faith, you have often looked up
to Mr. Great Heart and you have said,
Oh, that I had the courage of Great
Heart, that I could wield his sword and
cut old Giant Grim in pieces.
Oh, that I could fight the dragons and
that I could overcome the lions.
But I am stumbling at every straw and
his shadow makes me afraid.
Listen, little faith.
Great Heart is God's child and you are
God's child too.
And Great Heart is not a whitmore God's
child than you are.
David was the son of God, but not
more the son of God than thou.
Peter and Paul, the highly favored apostles, were
of the family of the Most High and
so are you.
You have children yourselves.
One is a son grown up and out
in business, perhaps, and you have another, a
little thing, still in arms.
Which is the most your child, the little
one or the big one?
Both alike, you say.
This little one is my child near my
heart and the big one is my child
too.
And so the little Christian is as much
the child of God as the great one.
This covenant stands secure, though earth's old pillars
bow.
The strong, the feeble, and the weak are
one in Jesus now.
And they are one in the family of
God and no one is ahead of the
other.
One may have more grace than another, but
God does not love one more than another.
One may be an older child than another,
but he is not more a child.
One may do more mighty works and may
bring more glory to his father, but he
whose name is the least in the kingdom
of heaven is as much the child of
God as he who stands among the king's
mighty men.
Let this cheer and comfort us when we
draw near to God and say, Our Father,
which art in heaven.
I will make but one more remark before
I leave this point, namely this, that our
being the children of God brings with it
innumerable privileges.
Time would fail me if I were to
attempt to read the long roll of the
Christian's joyous privileges.
I am God's child.
If so, he will clothe me.
My shoes shall be iron and brass.
He will array me with the robe of
my Savior's righteousness, for he has said, Bring
forth the best robe and put it on
him.
And he has also said that he will
put a crown of pure gold upon my
head, and inasmuch as I am a king's
son, I shall have a royal crown.
Am I his child?
Then he will feed me.
My bread shall be given me, and my
water shall be sure.
He that feeds the ravens will never let
his children starve.
If a good husbandman feeds the barndoor fowl
and the sheep and the bullocks, certainly his
children shall not starve.
Does my father deck the lily, and shall
I go naked?
Does he feed the fowls of the heaven,
that so not neither do they reap?
And shall I feel necessity?
God forbid!
My father knoweth what things I have need
of before I ask him, and he will
give me all I want.
If I be his child, then I have
a portion in his heart here, and I
shall have a portion in his house above.
For if children, then heirs, heirs of God
and joint-heirs with Christ, if we suffer
with him, we shall be also glorified together.
And, O brethren, what a prospect this opens
up!
The fact of our being heirs of God
and joint-heirs with Christ proves that all
things are ours.
The gift of God, the purchase of a
Savior's blood.
This world is ours, and worlds to come.
Earth is our lodge, and heaven our home.
Are there crowns?
They are mine if I be an heir.
Are there thrones?
Are there dominions?
Are there harps, palm branches, white robes?
Are there glories that the eye hath not
seen?
And is there music that the ear hath
not heard?
All these are mine if I be a
child of God.
And it doth not yet appear what we
shall be, but we know that when he
shall appear, we shall be like him, for
we shall see him as he is.
Talk of princes and kings and potentates!
Their inheritance is but a pitiful foot of
land across which the bird's wing can soon
direct its flight.
But the broad acres of the Christian cannot
be measured by eternity.
He is rich without a limit to his
wealth.
He is blessed without a boundary to his
bliss.
All this, and more than I can enumerate,
is involved in our being able to say,
Our Father, which art in heaven.
The second tie of the text is brotherhood.
It does not say, My Father, but Our
Father.
Then it seems there are a great many
in the family.
I will be very brief on this point.
Our Father!
When you pray that prayer, remember you have
a good many brothers and sisters that do
not know their father yet, and you must
include them all.
For all God's elect ones, though they be
uncalled as yet, are still His children, though
they know it not.
In one of Krumacher's beautiful little parables, there
is a story like this.
Abraham sat one day in the grove at
Mamre, leaning his head on his hand in
sorrowing.
Then his son Isaac came to him and
said, My father, why mournest thou?
What aileth thee?
Abraham answered and said, My soul mourneth for
the people of Canaan, that they know not
the Lord, but walk in their own ways
in darkness and foolishness.
Oh, my father, answered the son, is it
only this?
Let not thy heart be sorrowful, for are
not these their own ways?
Then the patriarch rose up from his seat
and said, Come now, follow me.
And he led the youth to a hut
and said to him, Behold, there was a
child which was imbecile, and the mother sat
weeping by it.
Abraham asked her, Why weepest thou?
Then the mother said, Alas, this my son
eateth and drinketh, and we minister unto him.
But he knows not the face of his
father nor of his mother.
Thus his life is lost, and this source
of joy is sealed to him.
Is not that a sweet little parable to
teach us how we ought to pray for
the many sheep that are not yet of
the fold, but which must be brought in?
We ought to pray for them, because they
do not know their father.
Christ has bought them, and they do not
know Christ.
The Father has loved them from before the
foundation of the world, and yet they know
not the face of their father.
When thou sayest, Our Father, think of the
many of thy brothers and sisters that are
in the back streets of London, that are
in the dens and caves of Satan.
Think of thy poor brother that is intoxicated
with the spirit of the devil.
Think of him led astray to infamy and
lust, and perhaps to murder.
And in thy prayer, pray thou for them
who know not the Lord.
Our Father.
That, then, includes those of God's children who
differ from us in their doctrine.
Ah, there are some that differ from us
as wide as the poles, but yet they
are God's children.
Come, Mr. Bigot, do not kneel down and
say, My Father, but Our Father.
If you please, I cannot put in Mr.
So-and-so, for I think he is
a heretic.
Put him in, sir.
God has put him in, and you must
put him in, too, and say, Our Father.
Is it not remarkable how very much alike
all God's people are upon their knees?
Some time ago at a prayer meeting I
called upon two brothers in Christ to pray,
one after another, the one a Wesleyan and
the other a strong Calvinist.
And the Wesleyan prayed the most Calvinistic prayer
of the two, I do believe.
At least I could not tell which was
which.
I listened to see if I could not
discern some peculiarity even in their phraseology, but
there was none.
Saints in prayer appear as one, for when
they get on their knees they are all
compelled to say, Our Father, and all their
language afterwards is of the same sort.
When thou prayest to God, put in the
poor, for is he not the father of
many of the poor, rich in faith, and
heirs of the kingdom, though they be poor
in this world?
Come, my sister, if thou bowest thy knee
amid the rustling of silk and satin, yet
remember the cotton and the print.
My brother, is there wealth in thy hand?
Yet I pray thee, remember thy brethren of
the horny hand and the dusty brow.
Remember those who could not wear what thou
wearest, nor eat what thou eatest, but are
as Lazarus compared with thee, while thou art
as Dives.
Pray for them, put them all in the
same prayer and say, Our Father, and pray
for those that are divided from us by
the sea, those that are in heathen lands,
scattered like precious salt in the midst of
this world's putrefaction.
Pray for all that name the name of
Jesus, and let thy prayer be a great
and comprehensive one.
Our Father, which art in heaven, and after
thou hast prayed that, rise up and act
it.
Say not, Our Father, and then look upon
thy brethren with a sneer or a frown.
I beseech thee, live like a brother and
act like a brother.
Help the needy, cheer the sick, comfort the
faint-hearted.
Go about doing good.
Minister unto the suffering people of God wherever
thou findest them.
And let the world take knowledge of thee,
that thou art when on thy feet what
thou art upon thy knees, that thou art
a brother unto all the brotherhood of Christ,
a brother born for adversity, like thy master
himself.
Having thus expounded the double relationship, I have
left myself but little time for a very
important part of the subject, namely the spirit
of adoption.
I am extremely puzzled and bewildered how to
explain to the ungodly what is the spirit
with which we must be filled before we
can pray this prayer.
If I had a foundling here, one who
had never seen either father or mother, I
think I should have a very great difficulty
in trying to make him understand what are
the feelings of a child towards his father.
Poor little thing!
He has been under tutors and governors.
He has learned to respect them for their
kindness or to fear them for their austerity.
But there never can be in that child's
heart that love towards tutor or governor, however
kind he may be, that there is in
the heart of another child a love towards
his own mother or father.
There is a nameless charm there.
We cannot describe or understand it.
It is a sacred touch of nature, a
throb in the breast that God has put
there and that cannot be taken away.
The fatherhood is recognized by the childship of
the child.
And what is that spirit of a child,
that sweet spirit that makes him recognize and
love his father?
I cannot tell you unless you are a
child yourself, and then you will know.
And what is the spirit of adoption whereby
we cry, Abba, Father?
I cannot tell you.
But if you have felt it, you will
know it.
It is a sweet compound of faith that
knows God to be my father, love that
loves him as my father, joy that rejoices
in him as my father, fear that trembles
to disobey him because he is my father,
and a confident affection and trustfulness that relies
upon him and casts itself wholly upon him
because it knows by the infallible witness of
the Holy Spirit that Jehovah, the God of
earth and heaven, is the father of my
heart.
Oh, have you ever felt the spirit of
adoption?
There is nothing like it beneath the sky.
Save heaven itself, there is nothing more blissful
than to enjoy that spirit of adoption.
Oh, when the wind of trouble is blowing
and waves of adversity are rising and the
ship is reeling to the rock, how sweet
then to say, My father!
And to believe that his strong hand is
on the helm when the bones are aching
and when the loins are filled with pain
and when the cup is brimming with wormwood
and gall to say, My father!
And seeing that father's hand holding the cup
to the lip, to drink it steadily to
the very dregs because we can say, My
father!
Not my will, but thine be done.
Well, says Martin Luther in his exposition of
the Galatians, there is more eloquence in that
word, Abba, father, than in all the orations
of Demosthenes or Cicero put together.
My father!
Oh, there is music there, there is eloquence
there, there is the very essence of heaven's
own bliss in that word, My father, when
applied to God and when said by us
with an unfaltering tongue through the inspiration of
the spirit of the living God.
My hearers, have you the spirit of adoption?
If not, ye are miserable men.
May God himself bring you to know him.
May he teach you your need of him.
May he lead you to the cross of
Christ and help you to look to your
dying brother.
May he bathe you in the blood that
flowed from his open wounds and then, accepted
in the beloved, may you rejoice that you
have the honor to be one of that
sacred family.
And now, in the last place, I said
that there was in the title a double
argument.
Our father.
That is, Lord, hear what I have got
to say.
Thou art my father.
If I come before a judge, I have
no right to expect that he shall hear
me at any particular season inaught that I
have to say.
If I came merely to crave for some
boon or benefit to myself, if the law
were on my side, then I could demand
an audience at his hands.
But when I come as a lawbreaker and
only come to crave for mercy or for
favors I deserve not, I have no right
to expect to be heard.
But a child, even though he is erring,
always expects his father will hear what he
has to say.
Lord, if I call thee king, thou wilt
say, thou art a rebellious subject.
Get thee gone.
If I call thee judge, thou wilt say,
be still, or out of thine own mouth
I will condemn thee.
If I call thee creator, thou wilt say
unto me, it repenteth me that I made
man upon the earth.
If I call thee my preserver, thou wilt
say unto me, I have preserved thee, but
thou hast rebelled against me.
But if I call thee father, all my
sinfulness doth not invalidate my claim.
If thou be my father, then thou lovest
me.
If I be thy child, then thou wilt
regard me, and poor though my language be,
thou wilt not despise it.
If a child were called upon to speak
in the presence of a number of persons,
how very much alarmed he would be, lest
he should not use right language.
I may sometimes feel when I have to
address a mighty auditorium, lest I should not
select choice words, full well knowing that if
I were to preach as I never shall,
like the mightiest of orators, I should always
have enough of carpet critics to rail at
me.
But if I had my father here, and
if you could all stand in the relationship
of father to me, I should not be
very particular what language I used.
When I talk to my father, I am
not afraid he will misunderstand me.
If I put my words a little out
of place, he understands my meaning somehow.
When we are little children, we only prattle.
Still, our father understands us.
Our children talk a great deal more like
Dutchmen than Englishmen when they begin to talk.
And strangers come in and say, Dear me,
what is the child talking about?
But we know what it is.
And though in what they say there may
not be an intelligible sound that anyone could
print and a reader make it out, we
know they have got certain little wants and
have a way of expressing their desires, and
we can understand them.
So when we come to God, our prayers
are little broken things.
We cannot put them together.
But our father, he will hear us.
Oh, what a beginning is our father to
a prayer full of faults and a foolish
prayer, perhaps, a prayer in which we are
going to ask for what we ought not
to ask for.
Father, forgive the language.
Forgive the matter.
As one dear brother said the other day
at the prayer meeting, he could not get
on in prayer, and he finished up suddenly
by saying, Lord, I cannot pray tonight as
I should wish.
I cannot put the words together.
Lord, take the meaning.
Take the meaning.
And he sat down.
That is just what David said once.
Lo, all my desire is before Thee.
Not my words, but my desire, and God
could read it.
We should say, Our Father, because that is
a reason why God should hear what we
have to say.
But there is another argument.
Our Father, Lord, give me what I want.
If I come to a stranger, I have
no right to expect he will give it
to me.
He may, out of his charity.
But if I come to a father, I
have a claim, a sacred claim.
My Father, I shall have no need to
use arguments to move Thy bosom.
I shall not have to speak to Thee
as a beggar who crieth in the street.
For because Thou art my Father, Thou knowest
my wants, and Thou art willing to relieve
me.
It is Thy business to relieve me.
I can come confidently to Thee, knowing Thou
wilt give me all I want.
If we ask our Father for anything when
we are little children, we are under an
obligation, certainly.
But it is an obligation we never feel.
If you were hungry and your father fed
you, would you feel an obligation like you
would if you went into the house of
a stranger?
You go into a stranger's house trembling, and
you tell him you are hungry.
Will he feed you?
He says yes, he will give you somewhat.
But if you go to your father's table,
almost without asking, you sit down as a
matter of course and feast to your full,
and you rise and go, and feel you
are indebted to him.
But there is not a grievous sense of
obligation.
Now we are all deeply under obligation to
God.
But it is a child's obligation, an obligation
which impels us to gratitude, but which does
not constrain us to feel that we have
been demeaned by it.
Oh, if he were not my father, how
could I expect that he would relieve my
wants?
But since he is my father, he will,
he must hear my prayers and answer the
voice of my crying and supply all my
needs out of the riches of his fullness
in Christ Jesus the Lord.
Has your father treated you badly lately?
I have this word to you then.
Your father loves you quite as much when
he treats you roughly as when he treats
you kindly.
There is often more love in an angry
father's heart than there is in the heart
of a father who is too kind.
I will suppose a case.
Suppose there were two fathers, and their two
sons went away to some remote part of
the earth where idolatry is still practiced.
Suppose these two sons were decoyed and deluded
into idolatry.
The news comes to England, and the first
father is very angry.
His son, his own son, has forsaken the
religion of Christ and had become an idolater.
The second father says, Well, if it will
help him in trade, I don't care.
If he gets on the better by it,
all well and good.
Now, which loves most, the angry father, or
the father who treats the matter with complacency?
Why, the angry father is the best.
He loves his son, therefore he cannot give
away his son's soul for gold.
Give me a father that is angry with
my sins, and that seeks to bring me
back, even though it be by chastisement.
Thank God you have got a father that
can be angry, but that loves you as
much when he is angry as when he
smiles upon you.
Go away with that upon your mind, and
rejoice.
But if you love not God and fear
Him not, go home, I beseech you, to
confess your sins and to seek mercy through
the blood of Christ.
And may this sermon be made useful in
bringing you into the family of Christ.
Though you have strayed from Him long, and
though His love has followed you long in
vain, may it now find you and bring
you to His house rejoicing.
This message, The Fatherhood of God, was preached
by Charles Haddon Spurgeon on September 12, 1858.
This is Charles Kelsch inviting you to join
me again for another message from The Prince
of Preachers.