by C. H. Spurgeon
(continued from page 208)
There is no need for prayer at all as far as God is concerned, but what a need there is for it on our own account! If we were not constrained to pray I question whether we could even live as Christians. If God’s mercies came to us unasked, they would not be half so useful as they now are, when they have to be sought for; for now we get a double blessing, a blessing in the obtaining, and a blessing in the seeking. The very act of prayer is a blessing. To pray is as it were to bathe oneself in a cool stream, and so to escape from the heats of earth’s summer sun. To pray is to mount on eagle’s wings above the clouds and get into the clear heaven where God dwells. To pray is to enter the treasure-house of God and to enrich oneself out of an inexhaustible storehouse. To pray is to grasp heaven in one’s arms, to embrace the deity within one’s soul, and to feel one’s body made a temple of the Holy Ghost. Apart from the answer, prayer is in itself a benediction. To pray is to cast off your burdens, it is to tear away your rags, it is to shake off your diseases, it is to be filled with spiritual vigour, it is to reach the highest point of Christian health. God give us to be much in the holy art of arguing with God in prayer.
The most interesting part of our subject remains; it is a very rapid summary and catalogue of a few of the arguments which have been used with great success with God. I cannot give you a full list; that would require a treatise such as John Owen might produce.
1. God’s attributes.
Abraham pleaded this when he laid hold upon God’s justice. Sodom was to be prayed for, and Abraham begins, “Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from Thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from Thee. Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” Here the wrestlings begin. It was a powerful argument by which the patriarch grasped the Lord’s left hand, and arrested it just when the thunderbolt was about to fall. But there came a reply to it. It was intimated to him that this would not save the city, and you notice how the good man, when sorely pressed, retreated by inches; and at last, when he could no longer lay hold upon justice, grasped God’s right hand of mercy, and that gave him a wondrous hold when he asked that if there were but ten righteous there the city might be spared. So you and I may take hold at any time upon the justice, the mercy, the faithfulness, the wisdom, the long-suffering, the tenderness of God, and we shall find every attribute of the Most High to be, as it were, a great battering-ram, with which we may open the gates of heaven.
2. God’s Promise.
When Jacob was on the other side of the brook Jabbok, and his brother Esau was coming with armed men, he pleaded with God not to allow Esau to destroy the mother and the children, and as a master reason he pleaded, “And Thou saidst, surely I will do thee good.” Oh the force of that plea! He was holding God to His word: “Thou saidst”. The attribute is a splendid horn of the altar to lay hold upon; but the promise, which has in it the attribute and something more, is a yet mightier holdfast. “Thou saidst”. Remember how David put it after Nathan had spoken the promise. David said at the close of his prayer, “Do as Thou hast said.” That is a legitimate argument with every honest man, and has He said, and shall He not do it? “Let God be true, and every man a liar.” Shall not He be true? Shall He not keep His word? Shall not every word that comes out of His lips stand fast and be fulfilled? Solomon, at the opening of the temple, used the same mighty plea. He pleads with God to remember the word which He had spoken to his father David, and to bless that place. When a man gives a promissory note his honour is engaged. He signs his hand, and he must discharge it when the due time comes, or else he loses credit. It shall never be said that God dishonours His bills. The credit of the Most High never was impeached, and never shall be. He is punctual to the moment. He never is before His time, but He never is behind it. You shall search His Book through, and you shall compare it with the experience of God’s people and the two tally from the first to the last; and many a hoary patriarch has said with Joshua in his old age, “Not one good thing has failed of all that the Lord God had promised: all has come to pass.” If you have a divine promise, you need not plead that with an “if” in it; you may plead with a certainty. If for the mercy which you are now asking you have God’s solemnly pledged word, there will scarce be any room for the caution about submission to His will. You know His will. That will is in the promise; plead it. Do not give Him rest until He fulfil it. He meant to fulfil it, or else He would not have given it. God does not give His words merely to quiet our noise, and to keep us hopeful for a while, with the intention of putting us off at last; but when He speaks, He speaks because he means to act.
3. The Great Name of God.
How mightily did Moses argue with God on one occasion upon this ground! “What wilt Thou do for Thy Great Name? The Egyptians will say, because the Lord could not bring them into the land, therefore He slew them in the wilderness.” There are some occasions when the name of God is very closely tied up with the history of His people. Sometimes in reliance upon a divine promise, a believer will be led to take a certain course of action. Now, if the Lord should not be as good as His promise, not only is the believer deceived, but the wicked world looking on would say, Aha! Aha! where is your God? Take the case of our respected brother, Mr Müller, of Bristol. For many years he declared that God hears prayer, and firm in that conviction, he went on to build house after house for the maintenance of orphans. Now, I can very well conceive that, if he had been driven to a point of want of means for the maintenance of those thousand or two thousand children, he might very well have used the plea, “What wilt Thou do for Thy Great Name?” And you, in some severe trouble, when you have fairly received the promise, may say, “Lord, Thou hast said, ‘In six troubles I will be with thee, and in seven I will not forsake thee’. I have told my friends and neighbours that I put my trust in Thee, and if Thou do not deliver me now, where is Thy Name? Arise, O God, and do this thing, lest Thy honour be cast into the dust.” Coupled with this, we may employ the further argument of the hard things said by the revilers. It was well done of Hezekiah when He took Rabshakeh’s letter and spread it before the Lord. Will that help him? It is full of blasphemy, will that help him? Where are the gods of Arphad and Sepharvaim? Where are the gods of the cities which I have overthrown? Let not Hezekiah deceive you, saying that Jehovah will deliver you.” Does that have any effect? Oh yes! It was a blessed thing that Rabshakeh wrote that letter, for it provoked the Lord to help His people. Sometimes the child of God can rejoice when He sees his enemies get thoroughly out of temper and take to reviling. “Now,” he says, “they have reviled the Lord Himself; not me alone have they assailed, but the Most High Himself.” Now it is no longer the poor insignificant Hezekiah with his little band of soldiers, but it is Jehovah, the King of Angels, who has come to fight against Rabshakeh. Now what will you do, O boastful soldier of proud Sennacherib? Will you not be utterly destroyed, since Jehovah Himself has come into the fray? All the progress that is made by Popery, all the wrong things said by speculative atheists and so on, should be by Christians used as an argument with God, why He should help the gospel. Lord; see how they reproach the gospel of Jesus! Pluck Thy right hand out of Thy bosom! O God, they defy Thee! Anti-Christ thrusts itself into the place where Thy Son was once honoured, and from the very pulpits where the gospel was once preached, Popery is now declared. Arise, O God, wake up Thy zeal. Let Thy sacred passions burn! Thine ancient foe again prevails. Behold the harlot of Babylon once more upon her scarlet-coloured beast rides forth in triumph! Come Jehovah, come, Jehovah, and once again show what Thy bare arm can do! This is a legitimate mode of pleading with God, for His Great Name’s sake.