The chapter which has been read in your hearing begins by informing us that “Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest,” desiring letters, giving him authority to go to the synagogues of Damascus, in order that he would bring the Christians there bound to Jerusalem. It was a day of fear and trembling to the Christians of Damascus, for they evidently knew of it, as we can gather from verse 14, but it became a never-to-be-forgotten day, both in the personal experience of Saul and in the history of the Church of Christ. Saul of Tarsus lived according to the strictest sect of the Pharisees, and the Pharisees were noted for their long prayers, and for performing them in the most public places to which they had access, but the Holy Ghost did not leave anything on record concerning these prayers of this Pharisee. Here we have him, blind, and after fasting for three days, all his religion gone with the four winds, reckoning himself the chief of sinners, and without anything of his own by which he could be justified, and the Lord says of him, “Behold he prayeth.” In this we have a clear picture of what is true concerning all who undergo a saving change. With some the change may not be so sudden, or so perceptible to themselves or to others, but the words of our text are true concerning them all, “Behold, he prayeth”.
In noticing these words as they are true in the experience of every soul that is quickened by the Holy Spirit, I shall endeavour to draw your attention to three things in particular:—
1. From what does prayer arise.
2. To whom should prayer be directed.
3. What should our prayer consist of.
4. From what does prayer arise.
4. From what does prayer arise.
It is very evident that the prayers of the natural man are not of such a nature as to merit that notice should be taken of them in Heaven, for if they were we would have some record of the prayers of such a zealous man as Saul of Tarsus, but the fact that the Holy Spirit passes over them in silence clearly proves that they are an abomination to the Lord. It is only when the Holy Spirit begins to work savingly in a poor sinner that he begins to pray, for it is then that he comes, through a sense of his sinfulness, to see his needs. Thus we see that it is when conviction of sin fastens upon a sinner that he begins to pray. He now realises that he is a sinner in the sight of God, and is under His wrath and curse.
Very often it is the case, in the work of conviction, that the Holy Spirit puts His finger on some particular sin of which the creature is guilty, so that that sin stands out in a particular manner as deserving the wrath and curse of God both in this life and in that which is to come. It is a flagrant transgression of the Law of God, but still the creature, foolishly, imagines that by other works of his, he can atone for this great sin. This, in turn, brings all his works, words, and thoughts, to the touch-stone of God’s Law, the character of which is that it is perfect. The Holy Spirit thus convinces him that he has nothing by which he can please the Lord for all his works, words, and thoughts, are polluted by sin. “Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” Micah 6: 6,7.
From a sense of the utter worthlessness of his actions and how polluted they are, the Holy Spirit leads the sinner to view the corrupt fountain from which they all proceed, and that that corrupt fountain is in the heart of the sinner himself. Men of the world imagine that a man may be made better by bettering his lot and improving the environment in which he is placed. The fallacy of this is proved by the fact that there are many in the world whose lot and environment are all that can be desired, from a worldly point of view, and yet their lives are far below the standard found among men in more humble circumstances. The convinced sinner is led to see that the evil is within himself, and that “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” He is brought to see that this natural corruption is the fruit of the Fall, so that he is constrained to confess with the Psalmist, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Nothing will do for him now but that the Lord would answer, in his case, the prayer, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”
Not only are sins of omission and commission brought to his view as his own particular sins, but there are also his sins in rejecting God’s great and glorious Remedy. You are here before me who are guilty of this great sin oftener than you can count, for in a preached Gospel the Saviour of sinners has been “set forth, crucified among you,” as He was among the Galatians. Preachers of the Gospel have exhorted and warned you from the days of your childhood, and you are able to read for yourselves concerning God’s provision as that is set forth in the Scriptures, and yet, in the face of it all, you are still in your sins. This is what the awakened sinner is brought face to face with in the day of effectual calling, and this is the background upon which the words of our text, “Behold, he prayeth,” is written so clearly. He is brought to see that he has despised the only remedy, and put himself among those for whom there is “no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.”
When a sinner is brought to this condition he is confronted with a sense of his need. He finds himself destitute of righteousness. Saul of Tarsus imagined at one time that he had a righteousness with which he could stand before the Lord, and that according to the righteousness which was of the law he was blameless, but when he came to Damascus on this memorable occasion he understood, as he never understood before, the words of Scripture, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” This is the case with every awakened sinner. The standard set before him by the divine law is so high that he cannot attain to it, for it is nothing short of perfection. To have a righteousness that would meet with the requirements of Justice, the sinner would need to bring to the Law holiness of nature, complete conformity to the Law in his life, and a perfect satisfaction for sin; but the Holy Spirit convinces him that he cannot do it, and that God will accept of nothing less.
Along with a sense of his need of righteousness, there is a sense of his need of grace. The man who before was so satisfied with his own prayers and his own attainments now comes to realise that he cannot pray or do anything aright without grace. How easy it was for the Pharisees to stand in the market places and at the corners of the streets and pray. They did not require any assistance beyond what they were able to supply themselves, and the longer the prayer the surer they were that it would be heard. This is the way with natural men and their prayers, but the convinced sinner feels his need of grace to pray, and his felt need in that direction, as well as in other directions, sends him to pray. Such will not pray in vain, for it is written, “I said not unto the seed of Jacob, seek ye me in vain.”
Another need of those who pray is the need of being strengthened to resist temptation. The man or woman who begins to pray in real earnest encounters temptations, for he is exercised in a way that is troublesome to Satan. Satan cannot abide a praying sinner, and therefore, he must either be kept from praying, or his prayers must be spoiled by making him believe that they will not be answered, or when a prayer is not answered immediately, he must be made to entertain hard thoughts about God, or tempted to question His power or His very existence. Such need, that with the temptation, a way of escape might be made, and it is only through God assisting them that they overleap these walls and similar ones, and thus proclaim with the Apostle, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
Prayer arises from the individual being harassed with perplexing thoughts. These perplexing thoughts often arise when a sinner is under the spirit of bondage. Through the knowledge which he gets of his own inward corruptions, he begins to question if one so polluted can get to Heaven, and the question, in this connection, that is often uppermost in his mind is, Was ever such a one as I saved? He then asks, Can God be just in saving such a filthy sinner as I am who not only led an ungodly life by transgressing the Law, but also crucified to myself afresh the Lord of Glory and put Him to an open shame? These are questions which, more or less, harass the awakened sinner before he gets, through the teaching of the Holy Spirit, a Scriptural view of God’s plan of salvation, yet this acts as a stimulus to prayer, for he has heard of other great sinners, and he reasons, in the language of Scripture, “Who knoweth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him.”
Again, prayer arises from the perplexing situation in which a man finds himself when God is silent. This experience is often found in connection with a man being under the spirit of bondage, but it is not confined to that period of the saved sinner’s life, yea, it is an experience that follows the most, if not all, of God’s children through life. These perplexing experiences are noticeable with the Psalmist when he says, “How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me.” Not only does he expostulate with God in this psalm about these protracted periods of silence but he prays, “Consider and hear me, O Lord my God; lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.” These experiences are very difficult to bear, but God causes His children to pass through them in order to fulfil the wise and gracious ends He has in view. While they are in the body His people are often ready to forget that they must be continually dependent upon Him. This exposes them to many snares, which, were it not for God’s gracious care over them, would cause them many a time to have broken bones. Their assurance of His favour lies in His speaking to them through His Word, and when they miss that, they are constrained to draw near to Him in their distress, and to cry for a renewal of these heavenly communications which at other times they had from Him through His Word. Thus they are in the exercise of prayer, and a praying soul is a humbled soul, and a humbled soul is in an attitude where God is pleased to give grace, “For God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.” From this we see that it is profitable for a child of God to be in darkness, even though the only fruit of it would be, that he would be constrained to pray in a manner that would be taken notice of in Heaven.
When wickedness abounds the real saint must be praying. He may view the world today and see it full of enmity to God. The nations are combined to plot against the Lord and His Anointed, and their desire and aim is to overthrow everything that has the stamp of holiness. Fallen nature appears in its worst colours; evil is called good, and good is called evil; those who are the Lord’s witnesses are made the objects of the scorn and contempt of the ungodly, and every effort is made to turn poor sinners from sobriety and seriousness to worship at the shrine of pleasure and intemperance. From the highest to the lowest, in Church and State, there is an almost universal disregard of the Word of God, which is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify God and enjoy Him and almost everyone does, as far as that Word is concerned, what is right in their own eyes. This may be considered a very gloomy picture of the times in which we live, but it is a real one, as every one knows, who is giving the least attention to conditions throughout the world. The statesmen of various nations may gather in order to devise remedies to heal the world’s ills, but so far they have utterly failed, and will fail, because they are relying on their own carnal wisdom. Full well the child of God knows that there is only one remedy for the world’s woes, and that is, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and equally well he knows that there is but one door at which men can apply for that remedy, and therefore the words of our text are applicable to him, “Behold, he prayeth”. This leads us to notice the second thing which I purposed to draw your attention to.
II. To whom should prayer be directed.
In the Bible we read of many prayers and some of these were never answered because those to whom they were directed could not hear, or could not answer the petitions put up to them. The worshippers of Baal on Mount Carmel never got an answer to their prayers for their god could not hear. Of the prayer of the rich man in Hell some one said that it had three defects. It was put up at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and to the wrong person, for Abraham could not grant an answer. The Christian, however has a prayer-hearing God whose ear is open to hear the confessions and petitions of sinners. “He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; he will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light.” He has heard the prayers of a countless number who are this evening on Mount Zion above, and whose employment now is to sing the praises of redeeming love. They were made conscious of their needs through the saving work of the Holy Spirit, cast out of all refuges of lies, and brought, as self-ruined and hell-deserving sinners, to cry to Him who is Jehovah, speaking “in righteousness, mighty to save.” They did not cry in vain, for their cry was the cry of the new birth, and the evidence of the beginning of a work which God has pledged himself in His Word to complete. “Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth? saith the Lord; shall I cause to bring forth; and shut the womb? saith thy God.”
When a sinner of our race approaches God in prayer, he cannot do so on the ground of his own righteousness, for he has none. It is only the proud Pharisee, whether he be Jew or Gentile, that has not learned that “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight.” Such imagine that by their own works they can approach God. They are blind to the depth, unbridgeable by man, which the Fall has put between them and God, and they ignore what is revealed of Him in the Scriptures, and that it is He “Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see; to whom be honour and power everlasting.” Thus their brutish folly causes them to weary themselves in a way which will never lead them to God. The man who is truly praying has learned that there is only one way to God, and that, through Him who says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
In coming by that way he has his eye on the Atonement which was completed on Calvary, when the Son of God, as the Surety and the Substitute of His people kept that appointment which was made with the Justice of God from all eternity, and, by the shedding of His own precious blood, paid to the uttermost farthing the debt under which His people lay, thus opening a way by which the love and mercy of God could flow out to them in a manner that is perfectly consistent with the Holiness, Truth and Justice of God. In thus coming by prayer to God, Oh! what a comfort there is in the words, “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” Here the poor sinner finds a sure and sufficient foundation upon which he can stand for eternity, and say with Samuel Rutherford, “I stand upon his merit, I know no other stand, not e’en where glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land.”
When the Holy Spirit reveals this wonderful foundation to the poor sinner, he gets a ravishing view of the incomprehensible love of God and of the gracious purposes which are unfolding themselves to his view, in connection with that matter with which he is now more immediately concerned, even his own eternal salvation. It baffles the powers of his mind to comprehend how such a pure and holy Being as he sees God to be, can take such delight in a sinful worm of the dust as he knows himself to be, as to bring into exercise all the revealed Attributes of the Godhead in order to be glorified in the salvation, rather than in the condemnation, of His enemies. Full well he knows now that this wonderful dealing of God with the soul cannot be traced to any merits in the creature, and can have but one source, even the incomprehensible love of God.
The sinner, awakened by the Holy Spirit, is in a different condition to the prophets of Baal. They prayed to a God who was not able to hear or do anything for them, but the awakened sinner prays to a prayer-hearing God, and prays as a sinner. I sometimes listen to men praying at funerals; the language is grand, the style is brilliant, the grammar is correct, the thoughts sublime and the diction faultless, but evidences of the broken heart and contrite spirit are conspicuous by their absence. This certainly is not the kind of prayer which the Apostle had in Damascus, and of which notice was taken in Heaven when it was recorded, “Behold, he prayeth”.
The prayer of which God takes notice, very often, has not even words. Those who utter them are very often in the same condition as the Psalmist, when he said, “Thou holdest mine eyes waking: I am so troubled that I cannot speak.” The prayers of such very often consist in sighs and groans, and, sometimes, sighs and groans over how much hypocrisy they find in their own sighs and groans, yet those very sighs and groans manifest the desire of their hearts. Though these sighs and groans are wrung from the soul through a consciousness of sin, yet those who have them are in an enviable condition, for this is the kind of prayer which the Lord hears, for “He hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from heaven did the Lord behold the earth; to hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death.” Let the groan or the sigh be ever so secret, a prayer-hearing God takes notice of it, and this is very comfortable when the broken-hearted sinner, in the exercise of faith, is enabled to say, “Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee.”
To pray to God implies humility, for it is the humble who pray. They are in the dust and in the dung-hill, confessing that they have nothing but death and corruption; that they can never be dependent upon themselves or any other creature for salvation, and have been brought to realise that their greatest earthly privileges, their highest attainments, and their circumspect walk in the world are but an abomination. This is how the great Apostle of the Gentiles found matters when he said, “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.”
III. What should prayer consist of.
Our prayer, first of all, should have confession of sin. The prayer of the Pharisee in the parable made no mention of sin, and he has many companions in our day. Sin has gone out of the vocabulary of the great majority of professors of religion in our day. There is no word of the Fall of man or the miseries which that brought upon mankind, but where the Holy Spirit is at work sin cannot be hid from the eyes of those who are the subjects of that work. Their sin is ever before them and they have to confess, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight.” This confession is not a mere lip one; it is accompanied with deep penitence and godly sorrow, for “they that escape of them shall escape, and shall be on the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them mourning, every one for his iniquity.”
In prayer there are, and must be, petitions for mercy. God has revealed Himself as merciful for the sake of Christ, and it is that revelation of Him in the Scriptures, conveyed to the understanding by the Holy Spirit, which constrains the awakened sinner to pray, “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.” This revelation is of such a nature that it encourages the vilest sinner out of Hell to petition for mercy, for there is enough for the chief of sinners, thus encouraging such a sinner to hope for mercy.
In prayer there should also be thankful acknowledgements of God’s mercies. We have many reasons for thankfulness that God has not marked our iniquities as He did in the case of the angels that kept not their first estate causing them to be delivered unto “chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment”. His treatment of us is in accordance with His mercy, and should cause us to acknowledge with thankfulness that “He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.” We should acknowledge with thankfulness in our prayers His daily mercies bestowed so liberally on us, both in providence and in grace, and, likewise, we should acknowledge with thankfulness what He has promised to do for such as wait on Him, for all that He has promised to do is as sure as if it was in actual possession, for all the promises of God are Yea and Amen in Christ Jesus. Above all we should acknowledge with thankfulness the gift of His Son and the manifestation of His love which is thereby made. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” It is in the name of that Son that all our petitions ought to be offered up.
Finally, our prayers ought to have respect unto the will of God. Many ask for things that are not agreeable to the will of God to give, and that is followed by dire consequences to themselves. The children of Israel present a fearful example of this, for we read that “He gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul.” There are many things which are lawful for us to ask, and God has revealed that it is in accordance with His will to grant them. In this connection we ought to remember that He has given many proofs that it is in accordance with His will to save sinners and, that, therefore, we ought to be praying for that salvation, and in praying for it, that we would be seeking to have an eye to His glory. When such a revelation has been made may we be found coming as sinners to a Throne of Grace with the prayer of the publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
May the Lord bless anything said that was consistent with the mind of the Spirit.