Matthew 7:7-12

Chapter 25

The Conditions of Prayer The Text and the Context the Filial Relation to God Much Given Without Prayer----the Blossom and Fruit of History

Prayer

Almighty God, do thou send a plentiful rain upon thine inheritance, and make this people rejoice with great joy. Do thou nourish us and comfort us with the bread of heaven, and with all the tender solaces of thine heart. Our life is in thine hand and not in our own, our days thou dost number, and our appointments thou dost make, yea, the day of our birth and the day of our death are both set down in the book which is open before thee. Thou hast assured us of thy presence, if we cry for it mightily through Jesus Christ our Priest and Saviour; for thy presence we do now cry, yea, our whole heart gathers itself up into one vehement desire that we might know where to find thee, that we might come into thy presence, that thou mightest dwell with us, and abide with us, and bear dominion over our whole life. This is our prayer, and to it thou hast but one answer: thy reply is an answer of love, thou wilt not deny the request of the heart that begs thy presence, through all the wondrous ministry of the Cross.

Thou hast kept us and not we ourselves; thou hast lighted our lamp, and the strong wind has not blown it out; thou hast established us in sureness, and behold the storm has vanished and we are still alive. It is because the good hand of the Lord our God is upon us that we are continued unto this day with root unshaken and branch unbroken, and with all the spring light pouring its tender blessing upon us, every beam a prophecy and every ray a blessing. We are in thine house now to eat and to drink according to the abundance of thine own welcome; we bring our hunger and our thirst where they can alone be satisfied. In our Father's house there is bread enough and to spare, and as for the river of God it is full of water, and if a man drink thereof he shall thirst no more. Whilst we are in thine house may the light fill our life, may the love of the cross burn in our hearts, may the infinite work of thy Son our Saviour disclose unto us all the beauteousness and all the sufficiency which he intended it to disclose. May our hearts glow with a new ardour, may our spirits rise with still higher and purer aspiration, may our heart go out after the Living One in cries of distress and yet of hope, until thou dost come to every heart amongst us, and make it thy chosen dwelling-place.

Few and evil have been the days of thy servants upon the earth, yea, though they be counted as many among men, yet has their number been few in thy sight and evil in our own. Behold we are of yesterday and know nothing, we are afraid of the dust, we tremble before the shadow, we turn away from the stroke of thy rod, and our hearts are melted with fear like water. Do thou therefore visit us in our weakness and come as the physician conies to men that die, and breathe upon us with all gentleness, subduing the wind of thine infinity, breathing upon us thy tender blessing. We are bruised reeds, unfit for music; do thou bind up our wounds and heal us and then breathe into us, and may our answer be one of gentle music. We are as smoking flax, we flicker before thee like a flame and die. O, that thou wouldst breathe upon it, and strengthen the fire by thy breathing, until our whole nature is aflame and aglow with thy presence; then would our life be always in the Sabbath, and our whole hope would be set upon things invisible.

Pity us in our sorrows and distresses, do not mock us in our miscalculations and follies, do not discourage us with bitter taunting from heaven when our own souls misgive us and we are afraid to try the good again; but with all gentleness and comfortableness do thou encourage us once more to do that which is right and to attempt that which is holy, and with every attempt do thou give increase of strength.

The Lord visit us according to the breadth and depth of our painful necessity. What every heart needs thou knowest: the prayer we dare not speak thou hearest; the gentlest knocking at thy door is heard as thunder in thine house. When we seek may we find. Thou knowest what we would be, what we would have, and what we would do, and we lay this before thee in uttered words or in silent desire, and we would desire to say at last, having completed the tale of our want and the prayer of our ignorance, "Nevertheless, not our will but thine be done." Amen.

Mat 7:7-12

7. Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

8. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?

10. Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?

11. If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

12. Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

So, then, the commerce between earth and heaven is perfectly honest and straightforward. There is nothing of moral jugglery about it. The wayfaring man, though a fool, may read these plain words and understand them. Do not attempt to steal anything from heaven; ask for it. Do not try any illegitimate methods of getting, finding, or anything else. The plan is simple, honest, perfectly intelligible and available to every sincere and simple-minded heart. Did you suppose that any man got aught from heaven by a species of legerdemain? Has it ever entered into your heart that some man was richer in spiritual graces than you are because he deluded God? Such is an infinite mistake on your part: the human side of this transaction is beautiful in its simplicity ask, seek, knock. You thought religion was an affair of mystery, deep and dark clouding, and impenetrable haze. It is the commerce between a child and his father. There is no mystery whatever about it, it is honest commerce. The bread we get from heaven we get honestly; you are not ill-used if you have not got that bread: ye have not, because ye ask not, or because ye ask amiss.

It is something to know that the human side of this transaction is perfectly intelligible and simple, and it is something to know that the human side of this transaction is that which applies to all our progress in life whatsoever it be, in so far as it is honest, substantial, and really good and durable. There is no particular masonic word to get hold of, nor is there any Eleusinian grip of the hand to learn. This is not a trick in the black art; it is asking, receiving seeking, finding knocking and having the door opened in reply to the appeal. All religion will be found at last, in so far as it is true, to be equally simple, equally to illustrate the law of cause and effect. The mystery that we find in the Christian religion we too often bring to it: it is but a gilding of the cloud of our own ignorance. The way of the Lord is equal, and his path among men is often such as can be apprehended by sanctified intelligence.

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." If you want your income increased, ask for it; if you want your health re-established, seek the Physician God, the one Healer, in whose heart grow all plants with healing juice flowing in their salubrious veins. If you want to advance in life knock at the door, and while you are knocking it shall be thrown open to you. There is no condition specified, there is no particular class of persons identified as the favoured sect or denomination for every one that asketh receiveth. There is no condition of title, character, claim: words cannot be more simple and more inclusive. If you want increase, health, joy, satisfaction, advancement, riches, honour ask, and ye shall receive, for every one that asketh receiveth. Why sit we here, therefore, poor dwarfs, empty of pocket, feeble of hand, blind of intellect, failing in health, crushed before the moth and the worm, and courting with cowardly spirit our own grave, that we may be hidden from the light of the day? Nothing lies between me and what I want but honest supplication. Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication make known your requests unto God. Never mind how bad you are you have simply to ask what you like and you shall have it.

There is not one word of truth in that statement, and yet who would wonder if some persons who read the Bible in fragments and morsels should openly and emphatically declare that to be the divine revelation. Learn to trust not only in the text but in the context. What I have now laid down to you would seem to be the very first meaning of the words I have read. That meaning seems to be written upon the very face of the text, and yet every sentence I have uttered in the latter part of the exposition is utterly false. How can that be proved to be so? By Christ's own words. But is there any condition signified in the text? Most undoubtedly there is a vital condition, not only signified but explicitly laid down in so many words. You must not break in on the Saviour whilst he is preaching and teaching; you must hear his whole statement and compare part with part, and by comparing one part with another you must establish the truth which he came to reveal and enforce. Let us, therefore, look at the illustration which he himself gives of the doctrine which he has laid down.

"Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread will he give him a stone, or if he ask a fish will he give him a serpent?" Then there is a certain class specified in the text? Undoubtedly. What is that class? "What man is there of you whom if his son ask bread." It is a filial relation, it is a child praying to his father. It is not an alien, a stranger, a rebel, it is a child's heart praying a child's prayer. What further condition is there specified in the text? The next condition laid down in the text is that what we ask for is good. Read again. "What man is there of you whom if his son ask bread, ox fish, or egg." Why, these are necessary to life. You talked just now about asking for a double income, and a larger house, and fifty more fields added to your small estate. No, no the doctrine relates to bread, fish, egg food necessaries of life, and it is the son that prays. So, then, the foolish man who first ran away with the idea that we only had to go and ask and have, is altogether disqualified for the exposition of this portion of Scripture. He talks a foreign tongue, he utters the fool's swift language that hath no faith or sense in it. The strong limitation, the definition of boundary that is not to be trespassed, is Son, as the suppliant: Bread, Fish, Egg as the subjects of petition. Bodily nutriment, intellectual nutriment, spiritual nutriment, the bread, the fish, the egg applied to all the necessities of our multifold hunger and thirst that evermore besiege and urge and distress our nature. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs. Dog, you cannot pray. This is a portion of meat for the king's children; it is a special household that sits down at this table and eats and drinks abundantly of this divine hospitality.

"What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread will he give him a stone, or if he ask a fish will he give him a serpent," and elsewhere, "if he ask an egg will he give him a scorpion?" What is the great deduction of the divine Teacher? "If ye then, being evil, short-sighted, mean-hearted, children of miscalculation, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" This is the true method of teaching, climbing up step by step from the human to the divine. Said I not unto you ye are gods? Learn from the little divinity that is in yourself, O man, the infinite divinity that is in God. When you are at your very best, in love, pity, sacrifice, care for others, multiply that condition of heart by infinity, and the result will be your Father which is in heaven. Let common-sense assist you in all these expositions, and you will have no difficulty in getting down to the root.

Look at the case of your own family to-day, and your child shall come and say to you, "Give me your most precious possession." What would be your reply to the little child? Would it be an instant imparting of the gift? Nothing of the kind. Your child shall come to you and say, "Let me go out all to-day and all tomorrow, and never you ask where I am or what I am doing. Now I have asked you, you give." What would you say to your seven-year-old little boy who came with that prayer? If ye then, being evil, children of the night, and of the bewildering shadows, unable to see straight and clear, know how to say "No" under the inspiration of love, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven say "No" to your poor prayers, your mean and ignorant supplications, your asking for scorpions under the supposition that they are eggs? For the naturalist tells us that the scorpion coils itself up so as to look very like an egg; hardhearted would be our Father in heaven, having heard our prayer when we have mistaken a coiled scorpion for an egg, if his answer would be the reply of death.

How do I stand then towards this Giver? Just as a child stands towards a wise father. Why, sometimes a father says to a child, when the child asks for more bread, "You have had enough, child." The father does not begrudge the bread, he delights in the child's appetite for food, but having some regard to the child's capacity and health, he may, even in that direction, interpose the suggestion that the boundary has been reached. Is he therefore cruel? Is he therefore unkind? He may simply be wise and thoughtful, a prudent father whose love asserts itself even in the form of prohibition. Is he a wise father who lets his child do exactly what the child wants to do, who gives a hearty "Yes" to every appeal of the child, who has no will of his own, no love, no firmness? What can become of a child brought up under such Loose government, if the word government in that connection be not wholly a misapplication of the word? The child will come to ruin. It is not love that suspends discipline, it is love that adjusts it, measures it, lifts it into a sacrament, making it holy, often straining the sensibilities of him who enforces or inflicts it, but under the sweet and bright hope that its infliction will terminate in health and blessing. We have had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we gave them reverence; shall we not much more be subject unto the Father of spirits and live?

So we find the element of character and discipline and prohibitive wisdom even in this domain of supplication and desire. Be sure you ask for good things and your answer shall be plentiful; and thank God that he says "No" to some prayers. I have gone, as no doubt you have, with prayers to God to be sent, or to be spared, or to be directed thus and so, and if the answer had been "Yes" we should not have been living men to-day. Let us, therefore, learn to put our prayers into the court of heaven, and having delivered them word by word, it may be sometimes with strong crying and tears, as if our life depended upon an instant reply, let us learn to say, "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done."

Read again. "Ask, seek, knock." That might be the development of one action; these may not be three distinct services on our part, but this line may mark the growing intensity of our religious application. Ask the easiest and simplest of exercises: seek implying more industry and anxiety: knock suggestive of vehement desire and perhaps impatience of spirit and eagerness of will and resoluteness. Our prayer has passed through all these transitions. Hear the good man's wise, rich prayer, how he asks in quiet, deep, fluent speech, how he passes on into seeking, stooping, lighting a candle and sweeping the house diligently, as if in search of that which is more precious than gold. See how he betakes himself to one supreme effort, laying down torch and broom, and going with both hands to the door of heaven, and knocking as if God had hardly time to open the door, because the wolf was so near. It is one grand prayer, beginning with the ease of a child's communion, ending with the resoluteness and the violence of a man who feels that time is dying and opportunity closing swiftly.

Do you know all the manners of prayer? Is your prayer quite an easy exercise, or does it strain the soul and awaken the highest efforts? Look how much we have that we do not ask for, and that does not come as the result of our seeking, knocking, or any variety of our supplication and appeal to heaven. And yet they must have come in answer to some word that is equivalent to prayer. For example all the light of day: the sun does not come out of his eastern chamber because some suppliant begged that he might return. And all the beauty of the spring, the luxuriance of the summer, the infinite largess of the autumn these are not God's "Amens" to your small petitions, they are divine anticipations of human necessity, they are answers before the prayer is spoken he pre vents us with his goodness, and his goodness should lead us to repentance. And we learn from the infinitude of his gifts, laid upon our life without our asking, how to utter big prayers, vast petitions, petitions worthy of himself.

Have we not, poor drivelling souls, measured our prayers by ourselves, and only stretched our supplications over the mean breadth of our own conception of life? When shall we learn to fill our mouth with great words and to utter prayers meant for heaven? Ye have not, because ye ask not. God says, "Bring your vessels, and the oil shall flow." More vessels, more oil; more still, and still more oil. Who gives up? Man. He says, "I have no more vessels" and God causes the oil to cease its flow. Never did God say, "There is no more oil;" it is always man that says, "There is no more room."

I have spoken of the gift of the light of the day, I have spoken of the beauty and richness of the succeeding seasons, but these are mean gifts. He who gave them gave us without our asking Christ. And he that spared not his own Son, but freely delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Christ did not come in answer to prayer, the cross was not set up because some ardent heart desired its elevation; Jesus Christ is the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world, God's answer to God's own prayer. So also is the gift of our life and all its responsibilities; we did not ask to live, we did not ask for one talent, or two, or five: I did not ask to be preacher or teacher, you did not ask to be merchantman or writer or thinker, or leader of human opinion we are what we are in all these matters of capacity and appointment by the grace or wisdom of God.

So then there is a region in which prayer seems to be uncalled for, or to be utterly without opportunity and avail. The gifts of God in nature, in redemption, in life, in responsibility, these are determined by his own will and not by our prayer. Yet there are, in relation to our life, many interstices which are to be filled by our own supplications and prayers. A man comes to feel somewhat of the range of his own capacity, then he besieges the throne of grace for direction, sanctification, and for the upholding and comforting of holy grace that he may not waste his life, pouring it out like a plentiful rain upon the unanswering sand. The man comes to find that he was born into the world with feeble constitution, with an irritable temperament, with physical defects or excesses that require the continual vigilance of his heart and the continual sanctification of God. There he begins to pray, God having in all things left an opening for prayer. There be those who pray for fine days I do not now: all days are fine. There be those who pray for health: I would like to live to be able to pray for health with this supplement to my prayer Nevertheless, if sickness be better for me, the Lord make me sick every day.

Now the Saviour comes to his last word. Let me ask you to read it. "Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets." Who has an eye acute enough in vision to see the connection between this therefore and the argument that has gone before? It startled me: I did not know that the argument stretched itself beyond the eleventh verse "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more ." Said I, "The argument ends with that enquiry," and behold in the twelfth verse I was challenged with a great therefore, as if the syllogism did not complete itself until we came to this conclusion "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." What has that to do with the subject? "Evidently nothing," say you. "Evidently much," says Christ. This is no incoherence on the part of the divine Teacher. He does sometimes startle by taking what are called new departures, but in this Ergo he stands steadily by the argument he has been establishing. Let us read it with the intent of discovering his meaning.

"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children the good gifts being indicated in the ninth and tenth verses what man is there of you whom if his son ask bread will he give him a stone? None. Therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, giving you bread when you ask bread, and not a stone. Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? No. Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, in answer to your prayers, never giving a serpent for a fish, a stone for bread, a scorpion for an egg, do ye even so to them. How would you feel, if asking your father for an egg, he gave you a scorpion? Would he not disqualify himself for the paternal relation? Therefore go by your own judgment, follow out your own reasoning if you would not receive a scorpion for an egg, as an act of love and of honour, never perpetrate that bitter and disastrous irony in your own dealings with mankind, for this is the law and the prophets this is the blossom, this the fruit of all history: it grows up into this, blossoming into love and fructifying into noble charity and honour.

Does not this seem a small result for so great a prophecy? Did it require thousands of years to grow this tree and to mould and mellow, in complete sweetness, this fruit? What is the fruit? Love. All the law is fulfilled in one word Love. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. For this the ages have travailed in birth, and this the child Love. This is the law and the prophets.

Where are you? Still in the region of opinions still discussing tiny metaphysics, still asking one another about your little narrow hazy theological views? I despise you", if you mean to rest there, chaffering and chattering about your denominational peculiarities and your metaphysical and theological distinctions, your orthodoxy and your heterodoxy, your isms and your ations. If you are there and still mean to stop there, I want to go on. What to? Love. Again and again remember that Love is the fulfilling of the law. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? I am more anxious to cure the disease of your affections than to correct your purely intellectual mistakes. Believe what you may intellectually, if your spirit be not bathed in the very love of God you have not entered into the inner places of the holy kingdom. This blessed love is often the best guide of the intellect. It makes men modest, it prostrates them in the lowliness which is acceptable to God, and it expels from the heart every passion that would contest the supremacy of Christ. I do not call you to brilliance or grandeur of intellect, but I do most strenuously exhort you to follow in the upward direction that is ever taken by the spirit of heavenly love.