THE MODEL PRAYER
By J. D. JONES
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 Lords
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
Chapter 1 THE
DISCIPLES REQUEST PAGE 9
Chapter 2 OUR FATHER PAGE 25
Chapter 3 HALLOWED BE THY NAME PAGE 44
Chapter 4 THE
SECOND PETITION PAGE 62
Chapter 5 THE
THIRD PETITION PAGE 82
Chapter 6 DAILY BREAD PAGE 100
Chapter 7 FORGIVENESS PAGE 117
Chapter 8 TEMPTATION PAGE 137
Chapter 9 THE
MODEL PRAYER PAGE 157
* * *
[Page 9]
Chapter 1
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 11: 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 Lords prayer as we commonly call it, though
I often think it might be more appropriately called The
Disciples [Page 10] Prayer - is a prayer we learned at our
mothers 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 Lords Prayer without praying.
Familiarity breeds contempt, we
say. People who live in the
[Hence
the truth expressed in the childrens Hymn:-
I often say
my prayers,
But do I ever pray?
And do the wishes of my
heart
Go with the words I say?
I might as well kneel down
And worship gods of stone,
As offer to the living God
A prayer of words alone!
For words without the
heart,
The Lord will never hear;
Nor will He to those lips
attend,
Whose prayers are not
sincere.]
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. Dont you wish you
did, madam? was the painters reply.
The fault was in the ladys vision.
The artist saw beauties in nature [Page 12] 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 Lords Prayer. [Page 13] 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 Lords
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 [Page 14] 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 fathers face when he came forth from that
interview. Do not think me fanciful when
I say that I believe that the Masters 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 Saviours 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 [Page 15] often have noticed that expression of
calm and peace on their Masters 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
Gods 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 -
[Page 16]
1. 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 [Page 17] 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, wherever 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 [Page 18] was best able to answer it, Lord, teach us to pray.
2. 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 mans 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 difficulty. They knew [Page 19] 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 Gods 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 [Page 20] 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.
3. 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 [Page 21] 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 singers feelings which makes [Page 22] the old song inappropriate,
impossible. It was so with these
disciples. They could not pray the old
prayers, because their hearts were changed [because
of prevailing and violent circumstances]. 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 well nigh 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, [Page 23] 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 Sauls 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 [Page 24] 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 Masters answer to the
request of His disciples. They say that
prayer is never answered! This Pearl of Prayers is - [and one DAY* will
be more visibly] - 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 Gods 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.
[* NOTE. The Day of the Lord is a theme to which the prophets were drawn
like moths to a candle flame. What is
this great event that so occupied their thoughts and which keeps breaking into
their writings as if they had suddenly taken off their reading glasses and
instead had picked up a telescope to gaze with astonishing clarity of vision
into the distant future?
It is the major theme of
biblical prophecy, running like an unbroken thread through the writings of the
Hebrew prophets, in which the phrase the Day
of the Lord, with its unique
significance, accrues 21 times between Isaiah 2: 12 and the very last verse of the Old Testament, Malachi 4: 5. Parallel to that phrase is another that has
similar theological significance when used by the prophets: in that day, which is found 107 times
in their writings and out of 80 references are directly
related to the future Day of the Lord.
It can express either a
particular point in time, or a period of time that may extend during months or
even years. When included in the phrases the Day of the Lord, or in that day, it is used
prophetically to indicate a particular future period of time when Gods
personal and direct intervention in human history will occur in order to fulfil
His purposes.
(David Noakes, The
Day of the Lord, pp. 39, 40.)
* *
*
[Page 25]
Chapter 2
Our Father
After this manner therefore pray ye,
Our Father which art in heaven. - MATTHEW 6: 9.
When ye pray, say Father.- LUKE 11: 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 - [Page 26] 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
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
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 Gods 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 Gods 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 - [Page 28] 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
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 Gods family, and upon all some trace of the family
likeness is to be seen. The old Greek [Page 29] poet, whose words Paul quoted in his memorable speech at
[* NOTE.
This parable appears to be one of restoration not regeneration! This my
son was dead, but is alive again. He was described as being alive when with his father and before
separating himself, and described as dead! Wilful sin and disobedience will cause the
Holy Spirits withdrawal! His
repentance, confession, and a desire for renewed fellowship with his father,
was what brought about the Holy Spirits indwelling and the new life to return
again!
See The
Personal Indwelling of the Holy Spirit, by G. H. Lang. The house that was once swept
clean, can be reoccupied by evil spirits: and the last state of that man will be worse
than it was before being cleansed! See
also, Acts 5: 32. cf. Rev. 3: 15- 20, etc.]
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 Psalmists 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 Psalmists 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 [Page 33] 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
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 [Page 35] 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 [Page 36] 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
Lukes 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 [Page 37] 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 Gods Fatherhood [Page 38] 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 oer 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.
[Page 39]
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
Gods 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 [Page 40] 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 childs character, has
been injured, if not ruined, by the un-wisdom 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, [Page 41] 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
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.
* * *
[Page 44]
Chapter 3
HALLOWED BE THY NAME
Hallowed be
Thy Name. - MATTHEW 6: 9; LUKE 11: 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 Gods honour
and glory. Our first thoughts when we
kneel in [Page 45] prayer must be of God.
Our first petitions must concern themselves not with our own personal
advantage but with Gods 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
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 Gods great mantle, our poor stars do gem. The Arabs speak of tracing Gods footsteps in
the world; Kepler, in studying the planets, said he
was thinking Gods thoughts after Him; Mrs. Barrett-Browning cries, Earths 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 [Page 50] for ever. But,
brethren, it is not the devils mark, but Gods mark that the great world
bears. I can see Gods 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
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 [Page 51] 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) Gods 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 Natures forces to do mens 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 [Page 52] 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 [Page 53] 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 Gods name? Gods name is Jesus Christ. In Jesus you get the full and final
revelation of Gods 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 Gods 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 Christs life, what I
find Gods 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 Gods [Page 54] 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 Gods 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 Gods 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 Gods 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 [Page 55] 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 Gods 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 Gods name, drag it through the mire, and make it the
jest of blasphemers and fools. Hallowing Gods name
does not mean bowing [Page 56] 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
Gods name?
(1) By cherishing worthy ideas of God. We are dishallowing (if I may be allowed to use the word) Gods 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 Gods 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 Gods name, casting a slur upon His character, and
sinning against His Fatherhood.
There is an old painting in one [Page 57] 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 Gods
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
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 [Page 58] 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 Gods
name.
But Gods name must be hallowed not only in thought, but in
life. So I pass on to say that not only
can you hallow Gods name by cherishing worthy thoughts of God, but you can
hallow Gods name also -
(2) By the trustfulness of your life.
Jesus has told
us Gods 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 Gods dealing with them
in
[* NOTE. Should we as His redeemed children (when disobedient to His
precepts), not fear Him! Can we expect a holy and righteous Judge (Who
out of love for our well-being) to treat us any different than what our actions
of disobedience deserve! There is a fear of God which is the
beginning of wisdom! Prov. 9: 10. Fear of God
is healthy,
Prov. 10: 27; 14:26, 27; 15: 16, 33; 19: 23; 22: 4; 23: 17;
Eccl. 8: 12; 12: 13. Lk.
1: 50; Acts 9: 31: to be without fear of Him is unhealthy! Rom. 3: 18.]
(3) We can hallow Gods name of Father by our obedience. The Italian brigand will repeat the Pater
Noster and then go on with his robbery. The Mussul man 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 fathers 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 Fathers name. From
the earliest dawn of life He was about His Fathers business. It was His meat and drink to do Gods
will. He was born at
* *
*
[Page 63]
Chapter 4
THE SECOND PETITION
Thy Kingdom come. - MATTHEW 6: 10; Luke
11: 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
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 summers 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. [Page 64] When mans 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 keynote 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
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 [Page 69] 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
And yet, while the
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 [Page 71] 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
The
The
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
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 [Page 75] 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
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,
Caesar, Napoleon built up their empires with the sword, and cemented them
with blood, but not so is the
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
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.
* *
*
[Page 82]
Chapter 5
THE THIRD PETITION
Thy will be
done, as in heaven, so on earth. - MATTHEW
6: 10.
THE third petition, which is omitted
from Lukes 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. Gods 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 Gods 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 [Page 83] 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 - kings in actual possession and
exercise of the royal power. Now God, if
I may be allowed to say so, is the worlds King de jure. He is the worlds lawful Sovereign and rightful
Lord. The earth is the Lords and the
fulness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. But God is not [at this present time]
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.
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 Gods will. The flower that blooms in hedge-side or
meadow; the lark that sings its way up to heavens gate in the spring sunshine;
the rivers that roll towards [Page 85] 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 Gods will. The wind is
Gods messenger; the thunder His voice; the lightning His sword. Nature obeys God. And above, in heaven, the angels and the
blest do Gods pleasure. Thousands at
His bidding speed, and post oer land and ocean without rest.
Is there any one then who resists Gods will? Yes, there is one, just one, and that one is man.
In all Gods 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 [Page 86] moral quality where there is no
freedom. Nature is unmoral 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 disobey. 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 Gods will; lust is not here by Gods will; strife and malice and envy are
not here by Gods will; war and bloodshed and slaughter are not here by Gods
will; misery and poverty and shame are not here by Gods will. They are here by mans will, because man set
up his own will in opposition to that of God.
The secret of the worlds 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 worlds 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 - [Page 87]
- till disproportioned Sin
Jarrd against natures chime, and with
harsh din
Broke the fair music that all
creatures made
To their great Lord, whose
love their motion swayd
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 prophets cry, let us get back to the old
allegiance. Come and let us return is the preachers call
to-day. The way to the
millennium is along the path of obedience. When Gods 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 win
one will,
To do and to endure.
Thy Will be done! This petition teaches us that it must
be our supreme desire that God [Page 88] may have His way with us. You will notice, as I pointed out a Sunday or
two ago, that this petition comes before the petitions for personal
blessing. It is infinitely more
important that Gods 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 [Page 89] 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 Gods 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 [Page 90] our chief and supreme desire that Gods 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. Gods 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 Gods 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:-
[Page 91]
(1) The will we are asked to make our own is our
Fathers will. Thy will be done! Whose will? Our Fathers will! After all, it ought not to be very difficult to obey a
fathers will, to fulfil a fathers 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 Fathers 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 mans 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 [Page 92] it?
We, too, shall be strong to make Gods will our own, when we remember it
is our Fathers 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 Gods 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
Fathers 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) Gods will ever seeks our highest
good.
What else
could any one expect, seeing that it is our Fathers 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 [Page 93] pass is meant to build us up in
patience [perseverance]
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 schoolroom 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 Gods 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 Gods 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 [Page 94] relatives. Again
do not let me be misunderstood.
Suffering Gods 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 [Page 95] 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 Gods 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,
0 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 Gods plans and
purposes as our own, and resolve to realise them. You can pray no nobler prayer than this, for in the doing of Gods 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 Gods will. He Himself let us into the [Page 96] 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 Fathers business. Do not commit the mistake of thinking that it
was only in Gethsemane and the judgment Hall and on
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 Gods will is done in heaven - (1) It is done cheerfully. Saints and
angels [will]
find their highest joy in doing Gods 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. Gods will can not be done by us as it is done in heaven, until
we can say sincerely, I delight to do Thy will, 0 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. [After the time of Resurrection]*, Heaven is perfectly happy, because all its people
are perfect in their obedience. Before earth can be like heaven, Gods 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.
[* 2 Tim. 2: 17, 18.
cf. John 3: 13; 14: 3; 1 Thess. 4: 14-17; Rev. 6:
9-11; 20: 4-6.]
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 [Page 99] obedience. It is not more knowledge of Gods will that we want, but grace to put
in practice what we know. What is the use of coming here
to-day to hear Gods 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.
* *
*
[Page 100]
Chapter 6
Daily Bread
Give us this day our daily bread. -
MATTHEW 6:
11.
Give us day by day our daily bread.
- LUKE 11: 3.
The petition which we are to study together this morning opens
the second part of the Lords Prayer. Up
to this point our petitions have all been concerned with Gods 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.
[Page 101]
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 [Page 102] 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 [Page 103] 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 mans 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 [Page 104] for a rich man; this is not
a prayer for a man whose barns and storehouses ate 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 [Page 105] 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? [Page 106] 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
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 [Page 109] 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 [Page 110] 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 Lords
own words, wealth and the luxury it buys are perilous to the best interests of
the soul.
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 peasants hut than in Caesars 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 [Page 111] have riches enter into the
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 [redeemed] 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 [Page 112] Give us!
This is a prayer for our brothers need, for our brothers 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
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 anothers; 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 peoples 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 [Page 114] 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 weeks wage has been earned by good and faithful
labour. The master who pays his men less
than their due, the man who wastes his masters 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 [Page 115] 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 yesterdays dinner will suffice us for
to-days 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 [Page 116] 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
Fathers 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.
* * *
[Page 117]
Chapter 7
FORGIVENESS
And forgive us our debts, as we also have
forgiven our debtors. - MATTHEW 6: 12.
And forgive us our sins; for we ourselves also forgive every
one that is indebted to us. - LUKE 11: 4.
My exposition of the Lords Prayer brings me this morning to
speak a few simple words upon the two great fundamental facts of the Gospel -
mans need of forgiveness, and Gods 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 [Page 118] 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 Gods smile.
Life is not worth having if Gods 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 Gods 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 [Page 119] 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 its 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 [Page 120] 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 [inheritance* and] 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.
[* Heb. 12:
14-17.]
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 it 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 [Page 121] 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 mothers 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
mothers 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 [Page 122] 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 Davids 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 [Page 123] 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. [Page 124] 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 hearts 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, [Page 125] 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, [Page 126] 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 [Page 127] 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.*
[* See Num. 14: 20. cf. 1 Cor. 10: 5-14; Heb. 10: 26-38; 12: 14.]
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 [Page 128] 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 [Page 129] 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 Christs sake will
cancel it. There are sins which crush us
with their weight and burden, but God for Christs 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 [Page 130] 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
Eer 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 [Page 131] 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
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 [Page 133] 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 [Page 134] 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: 0 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, 0 Lord, in
Thy sight; deal with me, I beseech Thee, even as I deal with my neighbour. He has not offended [Page 135] me one-tenth, one-hundredth part as much as I have offended
Thee. But I cannot forgive Him. Deal with me, I beseech Thee, 0 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, 0 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, 0
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, 0 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 [Page 136] 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.
* *
*
[Page 137]
Chapter 8
TEMPTATION
And bring us not into temptation but deliver us
from the evil one. - MATTHEW 6: 13.
And bring us not
into temptation. -LUKE 1: 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 [Page 138] 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, to sin no more.
That is an illustration of Christs 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 [Page 139] 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 [Page 140] 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 Gods 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.
[Page 141]
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 [Page 142] 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 earths 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
ones 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 [Page 143] 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 lull 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 Gods
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, [Page 144] and By-Path Meadow, and Doubting Castle, and the Mount of Error, Broad Way
Gate, and Dead Mans 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
[Page 147]
(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 [age-lasting] life was
a narrow path. To do evil [Page 148] 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 mans 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
(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 [Page 152] 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 Abrahams 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 [Page 154] 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 Gods 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. [Page 154] 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 Gods
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 [Page 155] 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 Christs 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?
[Page 156]
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.
* *
*
[Page 157]
Chapter 9
THE MODEL PRAYER
After this manner
therefore pray ye. MATTHEW 6: 9.
A fortnight ago we completed our study of the petitions that
make up the Lords 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 Matthews 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 [Page 158] 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 [Page 159] 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 Lords 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 [Page 160] 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 [Page 161] 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 Lords prayer. With
perfect appropriateness this form finds a place in all our services. I welcome the public use of the Lords 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. [Page 162] 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 Lords 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
Then for many of us it has associations of a still tenderer
kind. It comes to us burdened [Page 163] 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 bairns 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 mothers knee. What those bairns 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. [Page 164] 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
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 high-flown 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 [Page 167] 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?
[Page 168]
Theres 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 Gods glory will occupy the first place. Before ever a word is said about personal
needs our Lord teaches His disciples to pray that Gods name may be hallowed, that His kingdom may come, [Page 169] 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 Gods 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 Gods 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 [Page 170] 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 eer 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 [Page 171] things to us than we are to give good
things to our children. It is after that
manner - in
childlike faith in Gods 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. Christs prayers were prevailing
prayers, because He had a perfect faith.
He called God Father, and He honoured Gods 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 Christs spirit of loving confidence in God were breathed into
our prayers, how irresistible they would be. Dr. Stanford, in his little volume on the
Lords 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 madst
them birds, with wings to flutter and fold;
Take, Lord my prayer in Thy hand, and
make it pray.
[Page 172]
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 Gods 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 [Page 173] 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
THE END