Prayer—the Forerunner of Mercy

"Thus saith the Lord God; I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them; I will increase them with men like a flock."—Ezekiel 36:37.

N reading the chapter we have seen the great and exceeding precious promises which God had made to the favored nation of Israel. God in this verse declares, that though the promise was made, and though he would fulfill it, yet he would not fulfill it until his people asked him so to do. He would give them a spirit of prayer, by which they should cry earnestly for the blessing, and then when they should have cried aloud unto the living God, he would be pleased to answer them from heaven, his dwelling-place. The word used here to express the idea of prayer is a suggestive one. "I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel." Prayer, then, is an enquiry. No man can pray aright, unless he views prayer in that light. First, I enquire what the promise is. I turn to my Bible and I seek to find the promise whereby the thing which I desire to seek is certified to me as being a thing which God is willing to give. Having enquired so far as that, I take that promise, and on my bended knees I enquire of God whether he will fulfill his own promise. I take to him his own word of covenant, and I say to him, "O Lord, wilt thou not fulfill it, and wilt thou not fulfill it now?" So that there, again, prayer is enquiry. After prayer I look out for the answer; I expect to be heard, and if I am not answered I pray again, and my repeated prayers are but fresh enquiries. I expect the blessing to arrive; I go and enquire whether there is any tidings of its coming. I ask; and thus I say "Wilt thou answer me, O Lord? Wilt thou keep thy promise? Or wilt thou shut up thine ear, because I misunderstand my own wants and mistake thy promise." Brethren, we must use enquiry in prayer, and regard prayer as being, first, an enquiry for the promise, and shell on the strength of that promise an enquiry for the fulfillment. We expect something to come as a present from a friend: we first have the note, whereby we are informed it is upon the road. We enquire as to what the present is by the reading of the note, and then, if it arrive not, we call at the accustomed place where the parcel ought to have been left, and we ask or enquire for such and such a thing. We have enquired about the promise, and then we go and enquire again, until we get an answer that the promised gift has arrived and is ours. So with prayer. We get the promise by enquiry, and we get the fulfillment of it by again enquiring at God's hands.
Now, this morning I shall try, as God shall help me, first to speak of prayer as the prelude of blessing: next I shall try to show why prayer is thus constituted by God the forerunner of his mercies, and then I shall close by an exhortation, as earnest as I can make it, exhorting you to pray, if you would obtain blessings.
I. Prayer is the FORERUNNER OF MERCIES. Many despise prayer: they despise it, because they do not understand it. He who knoweth how to use that sacred art of prayer will obtain so much thereby, that from its very profitableness he will be led to speak of it with the highest reverence.
Prayer, we assert, is the prelude of all mercies. We bid you turn back to sacred history, and you will find that never did a great mercy come to this world, unheralded by prayer. The promise comes alone, with no preventing merit to precede it, but the blessing promised always follows its herald, prayer. You shall note that all the wonders that God did in the old times were first of all sought at his hands by the earnest prayers of his believing people. But the other Sabbath we beheld Pharaoh cast into the depths of the Red Sea, and all his hosts "still as a stone" in the depths of the waters. Was there a prayer that preceded that magnificent overthrow of the Lord's enemies? Turn ye to the Book of Exodus, and ye will read, "The children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage." And mark ye not, that just before the sea parted and made a highway for the Lord's people through its bosom, Moses had prayed unto the Lord, and cried earnestly unto him, so that Jehovah said, "Why criest thou unto me?" A few Sabbaths ago, when we preached on the subject of the rain which came down from heaven in the days of Elijah, you will remember how we pictured the land of Judea as an arid wilderness, a mass of dust, destitute of all vegetation. Rain had not fallen for three years; the pastures were dried up; the brooks had ceased to flow; poverty and distress stared the nation in the face. At an appointed season a sound was heard of abundance of rain, and the torrents poured from the skies, until the earth was deluged with the happy floods. Do you ask me, whether prayer was the prelude to that? I point you to the top of Carmel. Behold a man kneeling before his God, crying, "O my God! send the rain;" lo! the majesty of his faith—he sends his servant Gehazi to look seven times for the clouds, because he believes that they will come, in answer to his prayer. And mark the fact, the torrents of rain were the offspring of Elijah's faith and prayer. Wherever in Holy Writ you shall find the blessing you shall find the prayer that went before it. Our Lord Jesus Christ was the greatest blessing that men ever had. He was God's best boon to a sorrowing world. And did prayer precede Christ's advent? Was there any prayer which went before the coming of the Lord, when he appeared in the temple? Oh yes, the prayers of saints for many ages had followed each other. Abraham saw his day, and when he died Isaac took up the note, and when Isaac slept with his fathers, Jacob and the patriarchs still continued to prey; yea, and in the very days of Christ, prayer was still made for him continually: Anna the prophetess, and the venerable Simeon, still looked for the coming of Christ; and day by day they prayed and interceded with God, that he would suddenly come to his temple.
Ay, and mark you, as it has been in Sacred Writ, so it shall be with regard to greater things that are yet to happen in the fulfillment of promise. I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ will one day come in the clouds of heaven. It is my firm belief, in common with all who read the Sacred Scriptures aright, that the day is approaching when the Lord Jesus shall stand a second time upon the earth, when he shall reign with illimitable sway over all the habitable parts of the globe, when kings shall bow before him, and queens shall be nursing mothers of his Church, But when shall that time come? We shall know its coming by its prelude when prayer shall become more loud and strong, when supplication shall become more universal and more incessant, then even as when the tree putteth forth her first green leaves we expect that the spring approacheth, even so when prayer shall become more hearty and earnest, we may open our eyes, for the day of our redemption draweth nigh. Great prayer is the preface of great mercy, and in proportion to our prayer is the blessing that we may expect.
It has been so in the history of the modern Church. Whenever she has been roused to pray, it is then that God has awaked to her help. Jerusalem, when thou hast shaken thyself from the dust, thy Lord hath taken his sword from the scabbard. When thou hast suffered thy hands to hang down, and thy knees to become feeble, he has left thee to become scattered by thine enemies; thou hast become barren and thy children have been cut off, but when thou hast learned to cry, when thou hast begun to pray, God hath restored unto thee the joy of his salvation, he hath gladdened thine heart, and multiplied thy children. The history of the Church up to this age has been a series of waves, a succession of ebbs and flows. A strong wave of religious prosperity has washed over the sands of sin, again it has receded, and immorality has reigned. Ye shall read in English history: it has been the same. Did the righteous prosper in the days of Edward VI? They shall again be tormented under a bloody Mary. Did Puritanism become omnipotent over the land, did the glorious Cromwell reign, and did the saints triumph? Charles the second's debaucheries and wickedness became the black receding wave. Again, Whitfield and Wesley poured throughout the nation a mighty wave of religion, which like a torrent drove everything before it. Again it receded, and there came the days of Payne, and of men full of infidelity and wickedness. Again there came a strong impulse, and again God glorified himself. And up to this date, again, there has been a decline. Religion, though more fashionable than it once was, has lost much of its vitality and power, much of the zeal and earnestness of the ancient preachers has departed, and the wave has receded again. But, blessed be God, flood tide has again set in: once more God hath aroused his Church. We have seen in these days what our fathers never hoped to see: we have seen the great men of a Church, not too noted for its activity, at last coming forth—and God be with them in their coming forth! They have come forth to preach unto the people the unsearchable riches of God. I do hope we may have another great wave of religion rolling in upon us. Shall I tell you what I conceive to be the moon that influences these waves? My brethren, even as the moon influences the tides of the sea, even so doth prayer, (which is the reflection of the sunlight of heaven, and is God's moon in the sky,) influence the tides of godliness; for when our prayers become like the crescent moon, and when we stand not in conjunction with the sun, then there is but a shallow tide of godliness, but when the full orb shines upon the earth, and when God Almighty makes the prayers of his people full of joy and gladness, it is then that the sea of grace returneth to its strength. In proportion to the prayerfulness of the Church shall be its present success, though its ultimate success is beyond the reach of hazard.
And now again, to come nearer home: this truth is true of each of you my dearly beloved in the Lord in your own personal experience. God has given you many an unsolicited favor, but still great prayer has always been the great prelude of great mercy with you. When you first found peace through the blood of the cross you had been praying much beforehand, and earnestly interceding with God that he would remove your doubts, and deliver you from your distresses. Your assurance was the result of prayer. And when at any time you have had high and rapturous joys, you have been obliged to look upon them as answers to your prayers, when you have had great deliverances out of sore troubles, and mighty helps in great dangers, you have been able to say, "I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me out of all my fears." Prayer, we say, in your case, as well as in the case of the Church at large, is always the preface to blessing.
And now some will say to me, "In what way do you regard prayer, then, as affecting the blessing? God, the Holy Ghost vouchsafes prayer before the blessing; but in what way is prayer connected with the blessing?" I reply, prayer goes before the blessing in several senses. It goes before the blessing, as the blessing's shadow. When the sunlight of God's mercy rises upon our necessities, it casts the shadow of prayer far down upon the plain, or, to use another illustration, when God piles up a hill of mercies, he himself shines behind them, and he casts on our spirits the shadow of prayer, so that we may rest certain, if we are in prayer, our prayers are the shadows of mercy. Prayer is the rustling of the wings of the angels that are on their way bringing us the boons of heaven. Have you heard prayer in your heart? You shall see the angel in your house. When the chariots that bring us blessings do rumble, their wheels do sound with prayer. We hear the prayer in our own spirits, and that prayer becomes the token of the coming blessings. Even as the cloud foreshadoweth rain, so prayer foreshadoweth the blessing; even as the green blade is the beginning of the harvest, so is prayer the prophecy of the blessing that is about to come.
Again: prayer goes before mercy, as the representative of it. Often times the king, in his progress through his realms, sends one before him, who blows a trumpet; and when the people see him they know that the king cometh, because the trumpeter is there. But, perhaps, there is before him a more important personage, who says, "I am sent before the king to prepare for his reception, and I am this day to receive aught that you have to send the king, for I am his representative." So prayer is the representative of the blessing before the blessing comes. The prayer comes, and when I see the prayer, I say, "Prayer, thou art the vice-regent of the blessing, if the blessing he the king, thou art the regent. I know and look upon thee as being the representative of the blessing I am about to receive."
But I do think also that sometimes, and generally, prayer goes before the blessing, even as the cause goes before the effect. Some people say, when they get anything, that they get it because they prayed for it, but if they are people who are not spiritually minded, and who have no faith, let them know, that whatever they may get it is not in answer to prayer, for we know that God heareth not sinners, and the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord." "Well," says one, "I asked God for such-and-such a thing the other day. I know I am no Christian, but I got it. Don't you consider that I had it through my prayers?" No, sir, no more than I believe the reasoning of the old man who affirmed that the Goodwin Sands had been caused by the building of Tenterden steeple, for the sands had not been there before, and the sea did not come up till it was built, and therefore, said he, the steeple must have caused the flood. Now, your prayers have no more connection with your blessing than the sea with the steeple, in the Christian's case it is far different. Oft-times the blessing is actually brought down from heaven by the prayer. An objector may reply, "I believe that prayer may have much influence on yourself, sir, but I do not believe that it has any effect on the Divine Being." Well, sir, I shall not try to convince you; because it is useless for me to try to convince you of that, unless you believe the testimonies I bring, as it would be to convince you of any historical fact by simply reasoning about it. I could bring out of this congregation not one, nor twenty, but many hundreds, who are rational, intelligent persons, and who would, each of them, most positively declare, that some hundreds of times in their lives they have been led to seek most earnestly deliverance out of trouble, or help in adversity, and they have received the answers to their prayers in so marvellous a manner that they themselves did no more doubt their being answers to their cries than they could doubt the existence of a God. They felt sure that he heard them; they were certain of it. Oh! the testimonies to the power of prayer are so numberless, that the man who rejects them flies in the face of good testimonies. We are not all enthusiasts; some of us are cool blooded enough, we are not all fanatics; we are not all quite wild in our piety, some of us in other things, we reckon, act in a tolerably common sense way. But yet we all agree in this, that our prayers have been heard; and we could tell many stories of our prayers, still fresh upon our memories, where we have cried unto God, and he has heard us. But the man, who says he does not believe God hears prayer, knows he does. I have no respect to his scepticism, any more than I have any respect to a man's doubt about the existence of a God. The man does not doubt it; he has to choke his own conscience before he dares to say he does. It is complimenting him too much to argue with him. Will you argue with a liar? He affirms a lie, and knows it is so. Will you condescend to argue with him, to prove that he is untrue! The man is incapable of reasoning; he is beyond the pale of those who ought to be treated as respectable persons. If a man rejects the existence of a God, he does it desperately against his own conscience, and if he is bad enough to stifle his own conscience so much as to believe that, or pretend that he believes it, we think we shall demean ourselves if we argue with so loose a character. He must be solemnly warned, for reason is thrown away upon deliberate liars. But you know, sir, God hears prayer; because if you do not, either way you must be a fool. You are a fool for not believing so, and a worse fool for praying yourself; when you do not believe he hears you. "But I do not pray sir." Do not pray? Did I not hear a whisper from your nurse when you were sick? She said you were a wonderful saint when you had the fever. You do not pray! No, but when things lo not go quite well in business you would to God that they would go better, and you do sometimes cry out to him a kind of prayer which he cannot accept, but which is still enough to show that there is an instinct in man that teaches him to pray, I believe that even as birds build their nests without any teaching, so men use prayer in the form of it (I do not mean spiritual prayer): I say, men use prayer from the very instinct of nature. There is something in man which makes him a praying animal. He cannot help it; he is obliged to do it. He laughs at himself when he is on the dry land; but he prays when he is on the sea and in a storm, he seeks at prayer when he is well, but when he is sick he prays as fast as anybody. He—he would not pray when he is rich; but when he is poor, he prays then strongly enough. He knows God hears prayer, and he knows that men should pray. There is no disputing with him. If he dares to deny his own conscience he is incapable of reasoning, he is beyond the pale of morality, and therefore we dare not try to influence him by reasoning. Other means we may and hope we shall use with him, but not that which compliments him by allowing him to answer. O saints of God! whatever ye can give up, ye can never give up this truth, that God heareth prayer; for if ye did disbelieve it to-day, ye would have to believe it again to-morrow; for ye would have such another proof of it through some other trouble that would roll over your head that ye would be obliged to feel, if ye were not obliged to say, "Verily, God heareth and answereth prayer."
Prayer, then, is the prelude of mercy, for very often it is the cause of the blessing; that is to say, it is a part cause; the mercy of God being the great first cause, prayer is often the secondary agency whereby the blessing is brought down.
II. And now I am going to try to show you, in the second place, WHY IT IS THAT GOD IS PLEASED TO MAKE PRAYER THE TRUMPETER OF MERCY, OR THE FORERUNNER OF IT.
1. I think it is, in the first place, because God loves that man should have some reason for having a connexion with him. Saith God, "My creatures will shun me, even my own people will too little seek me—they will flee from me, instead of coming to me. What shall I do? I intend to bless them: shall I lay the blessings at their doors so that when they open them in the morning they may find them there, unasked and unsought?" "Yes," saith God, "many mercies I will so do with; I will give them much that they need, without their seeking for it, but in order that they may not wholly forget me, there are some mercies that I will not put at their doors but I will make them come to my house after them. I love my children to visit me," says the heavenly Father; "I love to see them in my courts, I delight to hear their voices and to see their faces; they will not come to see me if I give them all they want; I will keep them sometimes without, and then they will come to me and ask, and I shall have the pleasure of seeing them, and they will have the profit of entering into fellowship with me." It is as if some father should say to his son who is entirely dependent upon him, "I might give you a fortune at once, so that you might never have to come upon me again; but, my son, it delights me, it affords me pleasure to supply your wants. I like to know what it is you require, that I may oftentimes have to give you, and so may frequently see your face. Now I shall give you only enough to serve you for such a time, and if you want to have anything you must come to my house for it. O, my son, I do this because I desire to see thee often; I desire often to have opportunities of showing how much I love thee." So doth God say to his children, "I do not give you all at once; I give all to you in the promise, but if you want to have it in the detail, you must come to me to ask me for it: so shall you see my face, and so shall you have a reason for often coming to my feet."
2. But there is another reason. God would make prayer the preface to mercy, because often prayer itself gives the mercy. You are full of fear and sorrow, you want comfort, God says, pray, and you shall get it; and the reason is because prayer is of itself a comforting exercise. We are all aware, that when we have any heavy news upon our minds, it often relieves us if we can tell a friend about it. Now there are some troubles we would not tell to others, for perhaps many minds could not sympathize with us: God has therefore provided prayer, as a channel for the flow of grief. "Come," saith he, "thy troubles may find vent here; come, put them into my ear; pour out thine heart before me, and so wilt thou prevent its bursting. If thou must weep, come and weep at my mercy-seat; if thou must cry come and cry in the closet, and I will hear thee." And how often have you and I tried that! We have been on our knees overwhelmed with sorrow, and we have risen up, and said, "Ah! I can meet it all now!"