Thank you, Mr. McKinney, for your welcome.
We've been greatly looking forward to this conference
and we pray that God's help and Spirit
may be given to us all as we
wait upon Him in these days together.
Now let us read the Word of God
in the Prophet Isaiah, the 45th chapter.
Isaiah chapter 45 I
will break in pieces the gates of brass
and cut in thunder the bars of iron.
I will give thee the treasures of darkness
and hidden riches of secret places that thou
mayest know that I, the Lord, which call
thee by thy name, am the God of
Israel.
For Jacob my servant's sake and Israel mine
elect, I have even called thee by thy
name, I have surnamed thee, though thou hast
not known me.
I am the Lord, and there is none
else.
There is no God beside me.
I girded thee, though thou hast not known
me, that they may know from the rising
of the sun and from the west that
there is none beside me.
I am the Lord, and there is none
else.
I form the light and create darkness.
I make peace and create evil.
I, the Lord, do all these things.
Drop down, ye heavens from above, and let
the skies pour down righteousness.
Let the earth open and let them bring
forth salvation and let righteousness spring up together.
I, the Lord, have created it.
Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker!
Let the potsherds strive with the potsherds of
the earth.
Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth
it, What makest thou?
Or thy work, he hath no hands.
Woe unto him that saith unto his father,
What begettest thou?
Or to the woman, What hast thou brought
forth?
Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of
Israel, and His Maker, Ask me of things
to come concerning my sons and concerning the
work of my hands.
Command ye me.
I have made the earth and created man
upon it.
I, even my hands, have stretched out the
heavens, and all their host have I commanded.
I have raised him up in righteousness, and
I will direct all his ways, and he
shall build my city, and he shall let
go my captives, not for price nor reward,
saith the Lord of hosts.
Thus saith the Lord, the labour of Egypt
and the merchandise of Ethiopia and of the
Sabaeans, men of stature, shall come over unto
thee, and they shall be thine.
They shall come after thee.
In chains they shall come over, and they
shall fall down unto thee.
They shall make supplication unto thee, saying, Surely
God is in thee, and there is none
else.
There is no God.
Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself,
O God of Israel, the Saviour.
They shall be ashamed and also confounded, all
of them, that go to confusion together.
They shall go to confusion together that are
makers of idols.
But Israel shall be saved in the Lord
with an everlasting salvation.
Ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded, world
without end.
For thus saith the Lord that created the
heavens, God Himself that formed the earth and
made it.
He hath established it.
He created it not in vain.
He formed it to be inhabited.
I am the Lord, and there is none
else.
I have not spoken in secret in a
dark place of the earth.
I said not unto the seed of Jacob,
seek ye me in vain.
I, the Lord, speak righteousness.
I declare things that are right.
Assemble yourselves and come.
Draw near together, ye that are escaped of
the nations.
They have no knowledge that set up the
wood of their graven image, and pray unto
a God that cannot save.
Tell ye and bring them near.
Yea, let them take counsel together.
Who hath declared this from the ancient time?
Who hath told it from that time?
Have not I, the Lord, and there is
no God else beside me, a just God
and a Saviour?
There is none beside me.
Look unto me and be ye saved all
the ends of the earth, for I am
God and there is none else.
I have sworn by myself the word is
gone out of my mouth in righteousness and
shall not return, that unto me every knee
shall bow, every tongue shall swear.
Surely shall one say, in the Lord have
I righteousness and strength.
Even to Him shall men come that all
that are incensed against Him shall be ashamed.
In the Lord shall all the seed of
Israel be justified and shall glory.
Let us turn this morning to the words
that we find in the eleventh verse of
this chapter.
The eleventh verse of Isaiah 45.
Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of
Israel, and His Maker, Ask me of things
to come concerning my sons and concerning the
work of my hands.
Command ye me.
There are texts in different parts of the
Bible that when they are first compared together
appear to be in disagreement.
And I think that this is perhaps one
of those texts.
You will remember how our Lord commanded us
to take no thought for the morrow.
And yet here we have a text which
tells us very clearly that tomorrow, that the
future, is to be the subject of prayer
and thought.
Ask me, God says, of things to come
and concerning the work of my hands.
Command ye me.
But of course in this case as in
all those other supposed cases, there is no
real disharmony or disagreement between those two texts.
Our Lord's prohibition and the exhortation in these
words.
Our Lord forbids unbelieving thought about the future.
He forbids that kind of thought which leads
to anxiety, which leads to fear.
In that sense it is our duty to
take no thought for the morrow.
But there is another sense in which thought
for the future is obligatory for the Christian.
And it is that sense of course which
is found in our text.
A certain attitude to the future is laid
down in these words.
Ask me of things to come concerning my
sons.
Now it seemed to me as I considered
the first session this morning and the part
that I had been invited to take in
it that it would be suitable to turn
our minds to the future rather than to
the past.
I say that because of course in a
great deal of our time in this week
we look forward to thinking about the past.
We have already begun to do that last
evening and I am sure that all of
us who have gathered in this conference are
aware and convinced of the importance of looking
back.
We know that history is the work of
God and that therefore we have a duty
to listen to it and to read and
hear of God's mighty works.
But at the same time we also have
an obligation to look to the future.
And as we may not perhaps have much
occasion to do that in these days I
was led to take this text which is
before us this morning.
I suppose there is a sense in which
it is more difficult to look to the
future than to look to the past.
I think it is also true to say
that the way in which the church looks
at the future is a very accurate test
of her spiritual condition.
Or to put it more personally, the way
that we individually look at the future is
an accurate test of our spiritual condition.
How do we think of the future?
How do we anticipate it?
What kind of confidence do we have when
we contemplate that which is still to come?
It's easier for the world to look back.
We know that worldly people are not over
fond of doing that even.
But it is perfectly possible for unregenerate people
to look back at the past with a
great deal of nostalgia and interest, and you
are quite familiar with that at the present
time.
And Christians look back in a different way.
But I say, how do we look forward?
And in what kind of way do the
Scriptures exhort us to look forward?
We are not to make the future a
subject of anxious thought and prayer, but concerning
the things which are to come, we are
commanded in these words, Ask Me, saith the
Holy One of Israel.
Now, in the day when Isaiah first wrote
these words, there was a great division amongst
the people just on this subject.
Their attitude to the future.
And the division occurred in this way.
I suppose we would have to cast our
minds back a little earlier than Isaiah's time
to put the thing in its context.
You remember how in the days of David
and Solomon, Israel had been at her greatest
power and influence.
She was everywhere respected.
It was not simply the Queen of Ethiopia
that came and did homage in the days
of Solomon.
It was the position and the regard with
which Israel was held among the nations.
And then after the death of Solomon about
930 B.C., there came the commencement of
the decline, the division between Israel and Judah.
The beginnings, the development of political corruption, of
social decay.
Israel, instead of remaining a prince among the
nations, is gradually overshadowed by Syria and Egypt
and then supremely the great empire of Assyria.
And when Isaiah wrote and ministered some 200
years after the death of Solomon, the message
that God gave him to proclaim in the
first instance was the message of a coming
desolation and destruction and captivity.
When he is commissioned, as we read there
in Isaiah chapter 6, you will recall how
God says that that ministry was to continue
until the cities be wasted without inhabitants and
the houses without a man.
And the Lord have removed men far off.
Upon the land of my people, says Isaiah,
shall come up thorns and briars.
There was, in other words, the clear prediction
that captivity was going to come to the
people of God.
And that was the point at which the
people were divided.
How did they regard the future?
How did they regard that particular message which
was preached to well, we read in Isaiah
chapter 22 how the majority regarded it.
In that day we read in that day
the Lord of hosts called for weeping and
mourning and girding with sackcloth.
And behold, says the Prophet, joy and gladness.
Slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and
drinking wine, let us eat and drink for
tomorrow we die.
Their attitude was that whatever is coming tomorrow,
there is nothing we can do about it.
We'd better enjoy today.
And we'd better enjoy today because we've made
provision for the day.
In other words, the people were immersed in
materialism, in the lust for pleasure and entertainment.
Let us eat and drink for tomorrow.
Why worry for tomorrow?
Tomorrow when death comes there is nothing that
we can do about it.
And it is that attitude towards the future
which is here condemned in this prophecy.
And the people of God are charged, ask
me of things to come.
And concerning the work of my hands, command
ye me.
Now as we look at the words of
this text, let us note in the first
place that God is able to give us
information about the future because the future is
planned and controlled by Him.
This exhortation in our text would make no
sense if it wasn't for the fact that
God orders and rules and plans and because
therefore the future has been thus ordained by
God He is able to make known to
His people that which will come to pass.
You notice how God describes Himself in the
introductory sentence of the verse.
Who are we to ask concerning things to
come?
It is thus saith the Lord, the Holy
One of Israel and His Maker.
It is the One who makes history, who
fashions Israel, who controls, who determines, who appoints
the destiny of men and nations.
God has a plan and a program.
The Lord, the Holy One of Israel and
His former, His Maker, ask me, He says,
of things to come.
So that the church was being told in
Isaiah's day, in a day of trouble, a
day when there were many shadows and fears
to be, to exercise the people of God,
in that day they were told that the
future would not come as the result of
accident or of chance or by the will
of man, but that God had appointed it
and God would rule it.
Now of course the prophecy of Isaiah is
almost full of statements concerning God's planning and
control of that which would be.
Let me remind you of some of those
verses.
Surely as I have thought, God says, so
it shall come to pass.
And as I have purposed, so it shall
stand.
Or again, new things, new things do I
declare, before they spring up, I tell you
of them.
Or Isaiah 46 verses 9 and 10, I
am God and there is none else declaring
the end from the beginning and from ancient
times the things which are not yet done,
saying my counsel shall stand and I will
do all my pleasure.
Now there are I almost said dozens of
similar texts in the prophet Isaiah.
There are very many speaking to us of
the control of God over all things.
And this very chapter that we read of
course is one of those amazing disclosures of
such a program.
Here when Isaiah was writing, as I said,
the great empire of Assyria was bestriding the
earth in its power.
But Assyria would fall and fall before Babylon.
Babylon the great would rule.
But not forever.
In the year 539 B.C. Cyrus would
enter Babylon and the gates would be opened
and God would raise up Cyrus as his
servant in order to direct that the Jews
should be sent from the captivity in which
they would then be found and back to
Jerusalem and he says God shall build my
city.
And what we have in Isaiah 45 is
a very express and almost detailed prediction of
how some 200 years after Isaiah's day, God
would raise up this new leader, a new
empire and through it he would accomplish his
purpose in the ending of the captivity.
I'm sure you are familiar with this in
many portions of the Word of God.
Think of that amazing vision which God gave
to Nebuchadnezzar.
How he dreamt and saw in his dreams
this image, this colossus standing upon the earth
with a head of gold and breast of
silver and belly of brass and legs of
iron, feet of iron and clay and how
Nebuchadnezzar is utterly confounded believing that it is
a message from God but his wise men
cannot interpret it.
At last Daniel is called and Daniel makes
known to him, thou art he says, that
head of gold.
The head was the ruling empire of Babylon
but that empire would pass.
The Medes and the Persians would come and
then Greece and then the legs of iron,
the empire of Rome and in the days
of those kings, Daniel too says, will God
raise up a kingdom that would have no
end?
Just one of the many Old Testament examples
of how God has not only foreordained that
which comes to pass but He is sometimes
pleased to make that knowledge known in the
earth.
Think of the scene when our Lord stood
before Pontius Pilate.
Was there ever a day in history when
it seemed that man was ruling the earth,
that sin prevailed, that God was silent in
the heavens when Pilate said to Jesus speakest
thou not unto me?
knowest thou not that I have power to
release thee and power to crucify thee?
And Jesus says to Pilate thou couldest have
no power at all against me except it
were given thee from above.
Or think of the words when Jesus is
speaking later after His resurrection to Simon Peter
and assuring Peter that Peter would not fail
again but he would live a long and
full life in the service of Christ and
when the final test came, Peter would be
faithful unto death.
And the words in which Jesus put that
truth to Peter were those words we read
in the last chapter of the Gospel of
John.
When thou wast young thou girdest thyself and
went whither thou wouldest.
But when thou shalt become old another shall
gird thee and thou shalt stretch forth thine
hands and thou shalt be carried whither thou
wouldest not.
And that rather mysterious statement is at once
interpreted by John who says this he spake
signifying by what death he would die.
So you see the picture is of Simon
Peter with liberty to act, to serve, girding
himself, going forth, working in the cause of
Christ and a day coming not chosen by
Peter when he was stretched forth his hands
in bonds and another would lead him and
lead him to a place of death and
of martyrdom.
This he spake of the death by which
he would die.
But it was all known to our Lord.
Every moment of Peter's future existence.
And so when in Acts chapter 12 we
find Peter in prison with James put to
death by the sword and Herod about as
he thinks to do the same for Simon
Peter and Peter in prison the night before
his execution, we find him between those two
soldiers bound with a chain and sleeping as
peacefully as a little child.
Because, says the Apostle Paul, God has not
given us the spirit of fear but of
power and of love and of a sound
mind.
And having a sound mind means that we
know that God rules and Peter is not
disturbed and not fearful because he rests in
that knowledge as he sleeps there in his
prison.
A few weeks ago I read for the
first time something about Mrs. James Durham.
I don't recall reading of her before but
some of you will know the name of
James Durham, her husband.
He was an eminent commentator.
He wrote on the Song of Solomon and
on other books of the Scripture way back
in the 17th century.
And then he died as a young man
and left his widow who lived in Edinburgh.
And his widow lived through that fiercest time
of persecution in Scotland which was called the
Killing Time in the 1680s.
And what I read was this that during
that period when persecution was at its worst
Mrs. Durham met with a group of Christians
for prayer and discussion in Edinburgh and their
thoughts were upon the subject of God ruling
and controlling and reigning.
And as they dwelt upon that truth they
had the assurance that this storm would pass
that the gospel would go forward.
And the old account says that Mrs. James
Durham danced and skipped in the room as
they had spoken of these things.
Now you understand this was when persecution was
at its hottest.
But faith was laying hold upon the knowledge
that God is reigning and here is a
sober Scots lady we read dancing and skipping
in that room in Edinburgh.
And that is what we have to know.
Known unto God says James are all his
works from the foundation of the world.
200 years ago there were people who thought
that the world was to be ruled from
London or to be ruled from Paris.
In the lifetime of many of us Hitler
thought the world should be ruled from Berlin.
And there are those today who may imagine
that the world should be ruled from Moscow
or Peking or wherever.
But the Christian knows that God is ruling.
And God is ruling according to His own
counsel and as He has purposed so it
shall come to pass.
And therefore the first thing that we learn
in this text is that God is able
to give us information concerning the future because
He has planned it and because He has
appointed it.
Thus saith the Lord the Holy One of
Israel and His Maker, ask me of things
to come.
Now in the second place as we look
at this verse let us observe that there
are certain particular things about which we are
to ask God.
This verse does not give us a general
warrant to ask God all things about the
future.
Not at all.
There is a limitation.
There is a strict restriction put upon our
petitioning God.
Ask me of things to come concerning my
sons.
That is the limitation.
And it's a very vital one.
I don't need to remind you how unhappily
there have been and still are many professing
Christians who sometimes act as though the Bible
was intended to give us a preview of
what was to happen to our countries, to
Britain or to America or to the Middle
East or wherever.
And they kind of read the Bible as
though it's an advance record of what's going
to happen here and there and God is
therefore disclosing to us in advance the whole
sort of panorama of future events.
Now the Bible does not profess to do
that.
And this text does not warrant us to
ask such disclosures about the future.
It warrants us, it obliges us to ask
God of things concerning his sons.
As I say, I think that's a very
vital distinction.
Sometimes even good men have made a mistake
at this very point.
I hope God willing to say a little
about one of those good and great men
later this week.
But let me refer to him now.
I read a sermon of C.
H.
Spurgeon recently in which he speaks of a
Christian man, he says, one of the godliest
men he ever knew who came to him
and this man was full of forebodings about
the future of Britain and of London.
And this is what Spurgeon says.
He says, I walked some time ago with
one of the most earnest Christians I know
of.
He told me he was afraid that one
day the streets of London would run with
blood.
He was afraid of an educated democracy which,
being uneducated in religion, in secular schools, public
schools would become clever atheists and cast off
all reverence for God and law.
And he gave me an awful picture of
what was going to happen.
But, says Spurgeon, but I touched him on
the arm and said there is one thing
you have forgotten dear friend.
God is not dead yet.
What you are dreading will never occur in
this land.
I am sure.
Now, probably both these good men were making
a mistake.
One was being too gloomy.
The other was being too confident.
We don't have any grounds to make any
predictions about the future of our particular nations.
They are secret things that belong unto the
Lord.
Spurgeon had no warrant to make any such
firm, confident assertion regarding what might or might
not happen in London.
But, as we have said, what our text
asserts is that there are things to come
concerning God's sons which we are to know.
Now, that being the case, how are we
to know these things to come concerning God's
sons?
And I believe there is only one answer
to that.
We are to know them through God's promises.
The same God who told Isaiah to ask
him of things to come gave Isaiah those
promises of many things to come.
The same in the prophet Jeremiah.
Call upon me, God said to Jeremiah, and
I will answer thee and show thee great
and mighty things which thou knowest not.
In promises.
Or again, when He, the Spirit of Truth,
is come, said Jesus to the disciples, He
will lead you into all truth and He
will show you things to come.
In promises.
Or again, the Apostle Paul says, I have
not seen nor ear heard the things which
God hath prepared for them that love Him,
but He hath revealed them unto us by
His Spirit.
That is to say, in the written word,
in promises, which things the Apostle therefore says,
which things we also speak, not in the
words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the
Holy Ghost teacheth.
God speaks to His people concerning the future
and He does it in the promises which
He has given through Apostles and Prophets and
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
These are the things which God makes known.
And what are these promises about?
Well, they are about His sons.
Now, in the prophet Isaiah, you may observe
how continually God speaks of His sons and
also His Son, in the plural, or The
Son.
And the plural and the singular are bound
up with each other.
One is dependent upon the other.
Think of the verse in Isaiah chapter 7.
Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a
son, and thou shalt call His name Emmanuel,
a Son God with us.
For the next chapter of Isaiah, unto us
a child is born.
Unto us a son is given and the
government shall be upon His shoulder and He
shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God,
the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
A son is given.
A son is born.
And the prophet Isaiah, as you know, is
full of promises concerning this Son.
What is He to do?
He is to govern men.
He is to justify many.
He is to sprinkle many nations.
He will not fail nor be discouraged, says
the prophet.
He shall be exalted and extolled and be
very high.
He shall see His seed.
He shall prolong His days and the pleasure
of the Lord shall prosper in His hands.
The Son and this Son of whom Isaiah
speaks so often is the one to whom
it is said in His role as the
Saviour, the Governor, the Father says to Him,
Bring my sons from far and my daughters
from the ends of the earth.
And of these sons it is Jesus who
says in that word of prophecy, He hath
sent Me to heal the broken hearted, to
preach deliverance to captives, the recovery of sight
to the blind.
This Son is bringing sons unto glory.
And what Isaiah teaches us as the whole
Gospel is that everything that belongs to Jesus,
the Captain of our salvation, belongs also to
the sons who are being brought to glory
through Him.
So that His obedience and death is their
death.
It is counted as their obedience.
By that they will be justified.
His resurrection is the guarantee of theirs.
His riches are their riches.
His Holy Spirit which dwells in Him without
measure is the Spirit by which they will
be anointed.
They belong to Christ and they are sons
of God.
And God says, ask Me of things to
come concerning My sons.
That's the limitation.
And that is what we have to do.
And as I say, this prophecy of Isaiah
is full of promises concerning the sons.
What is going to happen to them?
Well, Isaiah says, the ransomed of the Lord
shall return and come to Zion with songs
and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads.
They shall not hunger nor thirst.
Neither shall the sun light on them nor
any heat.
They are not only going to be justified,
they are going to be saved in the
Lord with an everlasting salvation.
And so when we pray and petition God
concerning things to come, concerning His sons, what
we learn is this, that God is ruling
and governing the earth, not in the interest
of any nation, not in the interest of
any empire, but in the interest of His
Son and in the interest of that people
who belong to His Son, who are also
God's sons.
And therefore, all events, all things, war and
peace, light and darkness, good and evil, all
things are being appointed by God for the
building of the kingdom of these sons of
whom we read here.
And so when Paul in Romans chapter 8
asks the question whether tribulation or death or
persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or
sword are able to separate us from the
love of Christ, his answer is that they
are not because God is for us and
it is God who is using even all
these things for the furtherance and the interests
of His Church.
Those great nations which existed in the ancient
world, Assyria and then Babylon and Egypt and
Rome, what were they?
They were, as we read there in Isaiah
40, they were counted to Him less than
nothing and vanity.
And so are all earthly kingdoms and empires
in the sight of God.
God is building a kingdom, a kingdom at
whose head is the Lord Jesus Christ and
in that kingdom He is bringing many sons
unto glory.
Now in the third and last place, and
this is the very heart of our text,
we have to observe the holy familiarity which
God here encourages His people to use in
prayer.
I don't know what better way to say
it.
The holy familiarity, the boldness which God here
encourages His people to employ in prayer.
God makes known the future in promises.
But the stupendous truth is this, that the
God who foreordains, the God who has perfectly
planned all things, the end from the beginning,
is the same God who says that He
will be inquired of of the house of
Israel to do it for them.
Ask Me of things to come, and concerning
the work of My hands, command ye Me.
There is hardly a more remarkable verse in
the Bible.
This verse does not say that God has
purposed certain things, but we are responsible by
the work of our hands to fulfill His
purposes.
He doesn't say that.
He says that it's the work of His
hands.
The building of the church, the conversion of
men, the sanctification of the body of Christ,
this is the work of God's hands.
But the very God who is supreme and
who controls all says that concerning that work
we are to command Him.
In other words, that by pleading, by praying,
by wrestling with God, God will bring to
pass the blessings He has promised.
God requires prayer.
God will bring to pass what He has
designed as His people wait upon Him.
Later in Isaiah we read, as soon as
Zion travailed, she brought forth children.
That's God's way of working.
And there is a mystery there which is
utterly beyond the comprehension of our finite minds.
The God who is so supreme in power
and glory is the same God who thus
tells us to command Him.
Now, some of you may have some modern
translations in your hands, and if you have,
you will notice in some of them that
the King James Version has been revised on
this text.
Some versions read verse 11 as a question,
as a rebuke in fact.
Do you command me concerning the work of
my hands?
Or some such translation.
But there is no warrant for that change.
The King James translation at this point is
thoroughly adequate as a translation of the original.
And if you have the great commentary by
E.J. Young on the Prophet Isaiah, you
will see that Young doesn't even consider the
other translations that have been offered.
There is no warrant for them.
But you can understand, I suppose, especially perhaps
to someone who doesn't understand a great deal
about prayer, how they thought that the King
James Version was a kind of improbable translation.
Concerning the work of my hands, command ye
me.
But it's not improbable.
In fact, it's the very thing that Isaiah
himself does.
Read over again the praying of Isaiah.
And you hear him saying things like this.
Awake!
Awake, O arm of the Lord!
Awake as in ancient days.
That's commanding God.
That's pleading with God.
Awake, O arm of the Lord!
For again he says in Isaiah 63, look
down from heaven and behold from the habitation
of thy glory, where is thy zeal and
thy strength?
The sounding of thy heart and of thy
mercies towards us, are they restrained?
And then Isaiah tells us, ye that make
mention of the Lord, keep not silence and
give him no rest until he establish, until
he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
It's a staggering truth that God is to
be prevailed upon by prayer.
And there is nothing more unchristian and more
unspiritual than to imagine that somehow we are
living in a world in which events have
to take their course.
We are sort of puppets on the stage
of history.
There is really nothing we can do to
change what will happen.
That is not true!
Because God has appointed that we will pray.
And God has said that He Himself is
prevailed upon by the praying of His people.
The Holy One, this verse says, the Holy
One of Israel.
Where did that name come from?
What is it we read in Genesis 32?
When Jacob came to the brook Jabbok, and
there wrestled a man with him until the
breaking of the day.
The angel of the covenant.
And how as the day breaketh the angel
of the covenant said let me go for
the day breaketh.
But Jacob said, I will not let thee
go except thou bless me.
What is that?
That is doing what is commanded in this
text.
That is pleading with God.
And that is prevailing with God for we
read that God said, thy name shall be
no more Jacob, but Israel, for as a
prince thou hast had power with God and
hast prevailed.
Think of Moses at Sinai.
Pleading with God when the people had worshipped
the golden image.
Look at Elijah on top of Mount Carmel
with his head between his hands.
What is he doing?
He is commanding God.
He is pleading that those three years and
six months of drought will be ended.
He casts himself down upon the earth, we
read.
And he sends his servants to the sea
to see if God is about to fulfill
his word.
But there is no sign until the seventh
time the servant goes and behold a cloud
about the size of a man's hand.
The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man
availeth much.
Or read that eleventh chapter of Luke again.
And what Jesus tells us in this very
connection.
The parable he draws of the man in
bed at midnight with his children about him
and his door shut and his friend comes
at that hour wanting some loaves for a
friend who has come in his journey and
he has nothing to set before him.
And the man tells him to go away.
He can't get out of bed at that
hour, but, says Jesus, for his importunity, for
his importunity, he will arise and give him
as much as he asketh.
And I say unto you, says our Lord,
ask and it shall be given you.
That is to say, ask in that way.
Seek and he shall find.
Knock and it shall be opened to you.
How much more shall your heavenly Father give
the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?
Or read that story of the Syro-Phoenician
woman again.
How she pleaded and almost argued with Jesus.
She comes to him, the woman of Canaan,
and she cries out, Lord, help me!
And Jesus doesn't answer her.
Complete silence.
She has to go away.
She pleads with the disciples.
They come to Jesus and they say, send
her away because she keeps on crying after
us.
And Jesus says, he's not sent but to
the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
But the woman comes back again and she
worships him and says, Lord, help me!
The first cry, Jesus, thou son of David,
have mercy upon me!
He didn't seem to hear that cry.
She comes back with another one.
And then he tells her straight, it's not
fitting to take the children's bread and to
cast it to dogs.
But she won't have it.
She says, I don't need to be treated
as a child.
Let me eat the dog's crumbs.
Truth, Lord, she says, that is true what
you say, but...
And she goes on wrestling with him.
And why?
Because that's the work of the Holy Spirit.
That is prayer.
He only appears that he's not going to
answer.
But she pleads with him, concerning the work
of his hands, command ye him.
That is our duty.
And that is what the church has done
in all her brightest and her best days.
Listen to these words from Tertullian, one of
the early church fathers.
He describes how they used to pray.
He says, we beset God, as it were,
by troops.
We offer violence unto Him, but of the
kind He well likes.
We pour forth our prayers, we send up
our cries, we rap at Heaven's gate, we
rest and ring mercy and grace out of
God's hands.
That's a right understanding of God's promises.
We rest mercies out of God's hands.
That's how the Reformation happened.
That's what William Carey and his friends did
when people thought they were mad in thinking
they could go to India in 1792.
A little group of them.
What did they do?
Well, they opened the prophets.
They read that the Lord, the God of
the whole earth, shall thou be called.
They read in large the place of thy
tent, lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes.
And they took these promises and they pleaded
them with God.
And then they said, we're going to act
on these promises.
We're going to believe them.
And God met with them.
So this morning as we think of these
words, it seems to me they come to
us as a great rebuke.
It's not surprising the world doesn't pray.
But is there anything more surprising than the
fact that Christians should be so weak in
prayer when God has promised so much to
us?
Is there any way to account for it
except by our lack of love and our
unbelief in the face of the promises of
God?
And I'm sure as we go on and
look forward this week to hearing more of
God's servants of a past generation, one of
the things we will constantly notice is how
they hung upon God in prayer.
Those founding fathers, the men and the women
of Plymouth and Massachusetts, they were men and
women of prayer.
They came, yes, into a wilderness, but they
weren't looking to the wilderness.
They were looking to the future.
They were praying for the future.
They were doing what is commanded in our
text.
It was true of the Christians of 200
years ago.
How often, as you read the history of
those days in Virginia and in New England
and so on, they had days of fasting
and of prayer.
They were looking to God.
They weren't looking in the first instance to
their arms or to their success, but there
were a multitude of people in the thirteen
colonies who knew that it is only as
God blesses that any good will come.
And is there any greater difference between them
and ourselves than the prayerlessness of our day?
How little we are praying for our posterity,
for that which is to come.
That is what we are to do, my
friends.
We shall meet in vain this week if
we only look back to the past.
The purpose of looking back is to gain
new strength and hope and faith as we
prepare for the future.
And as we prepare for the future, our
greatest need is the need of prayer, to
plead with God, to come and revive His
work.
O arm of the Lord, awake as in
ancient days.
May God help us so to wait upon
Him.