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Daniel ten and verse one: In the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia, a thing was revealed unto Daniel, whose name was called Belteshazzar. And the thing was true, even a great warfare. And he understood the thing and had understanding of the vision. In those days, I, Daniel, was mourning three whole weeks. I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were fulfilled. And in the four and twentieth day of the first month, as I was by the side of the great river, which is Hidikul, I lifted up mine eyes and looked, and behold a man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with pure gold of Uphaz.
His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to burnish brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude. Verse twelve: Then said he unto me, fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that thou did set thine heart to understand and to humble thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words' sake. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days, but Lo Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, and I remained there with the kings of Persia.
And then over to the New Testament, to Matthew chapter seventeen. Matthew seventeen and verses nineteen and twenty. Then came the disciples to Jesus apart and said, Why could not we cast it out? And he said unto them, Because of your little faith. For verily I say unto you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
The Gospel of John now, please, and chapter fourteen, John fourteen, verses eleven onwards. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me, or else believe me for the very work's sake. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto the Father. And whatsoever you shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you shall ask me anything in my name, that will I do.
Chapter fifteen and verse seven: If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever you will, and it shall be done unto you. Chapter sixteen and verse twenty three. And in that day you shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, if you shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it you in my name. Hitherto have you asked nothing in my name. Ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be fulfilled. And finally, for the moment, the Acts of the Apostles, chapter four.
Acts of the Apostles, chapter four, Beginning there at verse twenty three. And being let go, they came to their own company and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said unto them. And they, when they heard it, lifted up their voice to God with one accord and said, O Lord, thou that didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that in them is, who by the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of our father David, thy servant did say, why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples imagine vain things? The kings of the earth set themselves in array, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.
For of a truth in this city, against thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, were gathered together to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel foreordained to come to pass. And now, Lord, look upon their threatenings, and grant unto thy servants to speak thy word with all boldness, while thou stretchest forth thy hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of thy holy servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken wherein they were gathered together, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spake the word of God with boldness.
God good- give us good discernment in his holy word. As you have heard, this is the last of our very short series of studies on the topic of prayer. Our main topic tonight, God willing, is to be the, our authority in prayer. Our authority in prayer. But before we can come to our topic for tonight, we have some unfinished business left over from last week to conduct and conclude. Last week, you may remember, we were dealing with the twin topic of proportions in prayer and persistence in prayer.
And we were talking about those areas of life in which persistence in prayer is enjoined upon us. We saw in particular that in our request for the gracious ministry of the Holy Spirit, illuminating the mind, illuminating the heart, and the gracious ministry of the Holy Spirit strengthening our hearts, we are to persist in prayer, refusing to take no for an answer, assured that God will, as our Heavenly Father, give Holy Spirit to them that ask him.
In addition, however, there is one other area in which we are called upon to persist in prayer. It is that area to which our Lord Jesus referred when he told us the parable of the widow and the unjust judge, which parable he introduced to us saying, men ought always to pray and not to faint, not to give in, not to give up, but to persist in prayer. The parable, you may remember, runs as follows. There was in a certain city a widow, and she had been evilly treated and unjustly treated by the men of the town in which she lived.
So she came to the judge and pleaded with the judge to take up her cause and avenge her of her adversaries. And for a while, the judge refused to do anything of the sort. I suspect he was in league and played golf with the aforesaid businessmen of the town. Anyway, he refused to do anything about the widow's requests. Ah, but he had reckoned without the persistence of the dear lady. She wasn't giving up, and she came, and she came, and she came again, and it was always the same plea. Please, your honor, avenge me of my adversaries. I have been hard done by and unjustly treated.
It is a matter of justice. Please avenge me and see that justice is done. And in the end, the judge said to himself, bother the woman. Oh, I suppose I shall have to do something, for she troubles me, beating me black and blue by her persistent coming. And so in the end he rose up, not because he had any respect to the principles of justice that he was supposed to care for in his office, but because of the sheer botheration of the woman constantly coming. And to relieve himself of this plague, he got up and avenged her of her adversaries.
A striking example then in the parable of someone who pleaded and prayed and persisted and would not give in. When our Lord came to apply the parable, he put it thus, and shall not God avenge his elect that cry to him day and night, although he take a long time over them and is long suffering in their regard? I tell you, said our Lord, he shall a- avenge them and avenge them speedily. And therefore we too are encouraged to persist in prayer that God will avenge us of our adversaries.
And you'll say, but Mr. Preacher, you were bad enough last week and got your dispensations all mixed up and wrong. Now you have committed a virtual haula. Surely we as Christians are to do no such thing. We are not to pray God to avenge us of our enemies. We are to follow as good Christians, we are to follow the example of our Lord. We are not Jews praying to God to bring down his judgment on their enemies, praying to him to dash their baby's head against a stone. We are Christians, followers of him, who even when he was being crucified, prayed for his enemies that God would forgive them.
So, Mr. Preacher, you have made a mistake. Please pass on, and don't talk to us about this widow who pleaded for avenging. Well, perhaps I've got my dispensations all muddled up, who can tell? But then I start here by observing it is a parable told by the Lord. And if our Lord tells us that we ought always to pray and not to feign. Surely he is not teaching us to do anything unchristian, is he? How could Christ ever teach anything that wasn't Christian? So number one, he tells us that we are to pray and persist in prayer and not to feign.
And secondly, if you'll notice, he was not telling us to pray for revenge. He was simply telling us that this widow came and asked that the judge would avenge her. That is, that he would see that she received justice. Her cause was just, and all she was asking for was, so to speak, her money back or her property back, or whatever it was that these evil men had cheated her of. She was simply asking for justice to be done to her, and not necessarily that she should seek revenge upon her enemy. And then, of course, we have not only our Lord's teaching on the subject, we have his own example, have we not, as to what attitude he took to those who persecuted him.
We'll say he prayed for his enemies, that's quite clear, and so he did. As the soldiers drove those terrible spikes through his wrist and staked him to a tree, he prayed, Father, forgive them. He was talking about the soldiers that were driving the nails through his hand. Father, forgive them, he said, for they know not what they do, and indeed they didn't, did they? They were Roman soldiers merely carrying out their duty. The claims and the counterclaims that he was or was not the Messiah would have been meaningless to them.
They were not Jews. They were there simply as soldiers of the Roman army, detailed by their general to carry out this amongst many other executions. They were doing their duty, and they beside knew not what they did. And Christ in his mercy pleaded forgiveness for them on that very ground that they knew not what they did. It would be altogether unauthorized on our part, wouldn't it, to extend that to say that our Lord prayed forgiveness for those who did know what they did. What was the attitude to those who did know what they did?
Well, first Peter tells us what our Lord's attitude was. It says that Christ also has left us an example that we should follow his steps, who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. But when he was reviled, he reviled not again, and when he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to him that judges righteously. We do well to ponder those statements. We picture in our mind's eye our blessed Lord standing before those unjust councils and courts. We watch him being scourged and led away to his place of crucifixion.
What a terrible thing it would have been for all concerned and for planet Earth indeed, if in those moments when he was reviled, he had reviled again. If in those excruciating moments of his torment he had retaliated and threatened, surely planet Earth would have crumbled under his threatenings. And being reviled, he reviled not again. When he suffered, he threatened not. But who suppose that means that in his heart he was saying, this doesn't matter, you know, I don't mo- I don't mind what they do to me. It's neither here nor there as far as I'm concerned.
As for the justice of it and the iniquity of it, well, there's no sense bothering about that. Of course he didn't. Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, lets us into the very mind and heart and thought of our blessed Lord as he was being led to crucifixion. He committed himself to him who judges righteously. He went to Calvary's cross in the unshakable conviction that God is a God of justice, that there will be a day, there will be a day of judgment, a final judgment, when all Earth's wrongs, including that of the crucifixion itself, shall be put right.
God will judge righteously, and our blessed Lord committed his case into the hands of him who shall judge righteously, and in that confidence could leave it there for God to deal with. And that set him free for that other delightful attitude that he took. He did not retaliate, he did not revile, he did not threaten. Instead, he bore our sins in his body on the tree, with all the terrible wreckage that they caused in his body, and did it of set purpose without retaliation, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness, by whose stripe we have been healed.
Because there was going to be a day of judgment. It set our blessed Lord free to take the suffering that evil men heaped upon him and to bear it and to contain it of the deliberate set purpose that that might be the very means in God's hand of bringing men and women to a repentance, to a realization of the hideousness of their sin and the seriousness of their sin, and inducing in them repentance might lead them at last to faith, that they might pass away from sin and live unto righteousness.
That was our Lord. And as you remember, that attitude of his came out as he talked to the women of Jerusalem on his way to Calvary. The women came out, breaking their hearts, as you might think, pitying him and weeping floods of tears, much as they would as if they'd seen a terrible accident on the road, you know, and somebody, um, uh, killed and all mangled up. He turned to them and said, enough of that, dear ladies. You shouldn't be weeping for me. It's not I that's got the wrong end of this stick, it's you.
For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in a dry? I tell you, says he, my dears, the days are coming when men shall cry upon the rocks to hide them. Why? Because of the inevitable consequence of what they are now doing, and the judgments of God that must fall upon them if they remain thus unrepentant. Don't you weep for me, says he, you weep for yourself. It was, I say again, in that profound conviction of God's justice and that one day there would be a judgment that set our Lord free, himself not to retaliate, but to endure the suffering with the redeeming purpose of bringing sinners to repentance and making forgiveness for them possible.
Our Lord calls upon us to adopt the same attitude. You will say, but I haven't got any enemies. Oh, how nice you are. I do congratulate you. And I suppose on the whole it's true, isn't it? We cannot speak of persecution like some have endured persecution. I think now in my mind's eye, I, I see coming before me the men and women in various countries that I have been honored to address, who, for Christ's sake, have lived daily under the fear of death and suffered enormously for the sake.
We cannot, few of us at least, can claim that we have known anything about such persecution. On the other hand, I don't know, I could be talking to businessmen, Christian businessmen, who, because they have refused to cheat in the marketplace, have found themselves cheated by others. Persecution, for Christ's sake and for righteousness' sake, can take many different forms, can it not? And this is a cruelly unjust world, and sometimes men and women who are not prepared to cheat are themselves cheated, passed by in promotion, put down, and suffer loss for their principal's sake.
And you will not think I'm telling tales out of school, will you, when I say that sometimes believers can suffer injustices at the hands of fellow believers. Sometimes such injustices are put right, and sometimes not put right. And then what shall happen? Shall the Lord say at length when we stand before him, well then let's forget it? Certainly not will he say so. He shall render to each the things done in the body.
So then we need to listen to the prayer, don't we? And our Lord's exhortations are backed home for us by the explicit words of the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter twelve, are they not? Beloved, he said, avenge not yourselves, but give place unto wrath, for it is written, vengeance belongeth unto me, I will repay, says the Lord. Notice the ground of the exhortation. You should not try to avenge yourself. Leave it to God. That is God's province, says Paul, and God has given his sure promise, vengeance belongs to me.
I will repay, saith the Lord. And James says the same thing, doesn't he, in his final chapter. My dear brethren, he says, be done with smoldering resentments against one another. You feel you have been hard done by, unjustly treated, and nobody will listen to you, and you feel the whole thing has gone by default, and you are inclined like a smoldering volcano to go on erupting sulfur from time to time. No, no, says James, not that. Why not? Why the judge stands before the door, and very soon will the judge come in, and then he shall put things to rights, not merely your grievance, what others have done against you, but their grievances, what you may have done against them.
It is then in the profound conviction that there is coming judgment for this world, there comes also judgment for the people of God, and a putting of things right. It is in the profound conviction that there shall be judgment. Now we are told that men ought always to pray and not to faint. Why should we pray? Why shouldn't we give in? We come back to our Lord's parable. And you'll see you mustn't give in, says he, you mustn't stop praying, for only consider, if you gave up praying, what that would imply for the very character of God himself.
Think again of the parable and the old judge of the town. He was an unprincipled rascal. He cared neither for God nor man, and principles of justice were not in his line. But even he could be moved to act in the cause of justice by a woman's persistence in prayer. But now, if you have a case that you need to take to God for God to intervene and deal with it, and God doesn't at once answer your prayer. Will you give up and say, well, it's not worth praying, you see, because God doesn't take any notice, and therefore it's not worth my while praying anymore about it.
Why, then you are implying that God is more unprincipled, more hard-hearted than that old unjust judge. And that would be an aspersion on the very character of God, would it not? There is a God, and we must hold as our absolute anchor hold of our faith that God cares for justice. If God does not care for justice, then heaven would grow black. Indeed, there would be no heaven to go to. It would be an aspersion on his character so to behave as to suggest that we have lost faith in the fact that God cares for justice.
He does care, says our blessed Lord Jesus. He will see that justice is done for his elect who cry to him day and night, though he is long suffering over them. How be it, said he, when the Son of Man comes, shall he find faith on the earth? Why shouldn't he? Why, because the sufferings on the people of God in general will not grow easier, they will grow worse.
And the great temptation for people will be, in the end, to give up believing that God cares for justice, or even believing that there is a God in heaven to care about justice at all. This is one of the very big trials, is it not, of the genuineness and the reality of our faith in the character of God. As I speak, I am reminded of that, uh, wonderful scene in the book of the Revelation, beginning in chapter eight, where for a while there is silence in heaven, silence of a half an hour.
Now, if you have ever experienced, and I'm sure you have, standing with a vast congregation of people, perhaps on November the eleventh or some similar day, when a silence of two minutes is being observed, you will remember that on those occasions, two minutes seems like half an hour. You just imagine being present in heaven itself with the legions upon legions of angels and myriads and ti- ti- ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, and there being absolute silence for a half an hour. Wouldn't you inside begin to boil up and say, well, when, when is this going to end?
And, and, and what's going to break the silence? Mm. John found the answer in the end when the half an hour was up. For the silence was broken as an angel came forward, and there was given to him much incense to add it with the prayers of saints that came up from the golden altar before God. And as the incense of the w- came up with those prayers, the angel turned out his censer upon the earth, and the judgments of God began. A beautiful figure, isn't it? Vivid figure of a problem that has tormented the hearts of God's people down many a century.
The silence of God. And the oft repeated question, why does not God hear? Oh, I think of the multitude of Jewish people carted off to the gas chambers, crying to their God, and no reply coming. And the thousands on the killing fields of Cambodia, and the thousands of your fellow believers in the archipelago, Gulag archipelago in Russia, and elsewhere. Cries of the early believers as they were led out to the lines. And why, why, oh why, was God silent?
Ah, we cannot now spend time in listening to all the reasons why that the Lord himself gives us in that passage of the Revelation. Save to notice two things, that the time eventually came for God to take to himself his great power and reign and give reward to his servants, and to judge the evil and to destroy them that destroy the earth. And in the meantime, there came an angel to John with one foot upon the land and one upon the sea, and he had in the one hand a book, a scroll containing therein the purposes of God, and he lifted up the other hand to high heaven, and he swore by him that liveth forever and ever that there shall be delay no longer, but that the promises of God shall soon be fulfilled.
Oh, wonderful vision. We do well to capture it in our mind's eye and let it sink down in our hearts, do we not? Whatever our trials and tribulations or persecutions or injustices in this ungodly world, and however long the silence of God seems in response to our prayers, there stands one before us this evening. He's Lord of heaven and earth, one foot on sea, one foot on land, and in his one hand he has a book of the purposes of God, and in the other hand he swears the very oath of God, that God knows our hearts and has counted and measured our sufferings and knows the limit of our patience and has heard our prayers, and soon, soon, says he, will grant us the answer, his oath, his covenant, his blood support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay. On Christ, the solid rock, I stand. So then there is this area of life in which the two in which we shall and are asked to persist in prayer that God's justice will be done. And meanwhile, like our blessed Lord, we can seek grace to follow his example, and when we are reviled or threatened, we do not revile again.
When we suffer, we do not threaten, but by God's grace, attempt to take and absorb the suffering, that in God's hand it might lead even our enemies to compunction and to repentance, and then to faith and forgiveness. But now we must come to the other, uh, chief business that we have to do tonight, and we're to think of prayer in another context. You will remember that on our first occasion, we spoke of prayer in the context of ourselves as children coming to our Father.
And in that context, we asked ourselves, why pray? For our blessed Lord told us that we do not have constantly to bombard God with endlessly repeated requests, for he knows before we ask what we have need of. We therefore set ourselves the question, well then, why do we have to pray at all? And that led us to ask, what is the true and ultimate reward of prayer? And we discovered that the ultimate reward of prayer is not simply getting the individual things that we ask for. The reward of prayer is in the fellowship it sets up between us and God, in the way it brings us to know the Father, to have experience of him and of his love and of his kindness, of the wonder that he is prepared to listen to our childlike requests, and as he sees wise and good, to grant us what we ask.
The reward of prayer is God himself. Last week we moved on to consider prayer in relation to ourselves, not simply as children with a father, but as scholars in God's school of holiness. And there it was that we came to understand these exhortations that tell us that we must persist in prayer. This is not needless repetition. It is the fact that the thing we ask for is a thing like our daily bread that we must pray for every day, and our seriousness in wanting this is shown by the fact that we do not ask today and then forget to ask for the next six months, but that we persist in asking day after day for the gracious ministry of God's spirit in our hearts, because we have discovered that we cannot do without it, and we refuse to live without it.
Now, for our remaining moments, we consider prayer in the context of ourselves as servants of the Lord, set to the work of God, of whatever kind that can be. And here, I suggest to you, we should think about our authority in prayer as the servants of the Lord. And here, it seems to me, is the heading under which we would be right to put those sayings of our blessed Lord that challenge us to the effect that if we are going to be effective as servants of God in our work for the Lord, then our faith must be strong and unwavering.
Not simply persistent, but strong and unwavering. You will remember the verse that we read, that famous example from Matthew chapter six seventeen when our Lord had come down from the mountaintop and cast out a demon from the father's son. And afterwards, the disciples came to him in private, and they said, Lord, why couldn't we cast him out? They'd had a go, apparently, as far as the story tells us, and they had been unable to cast out this evil spirit. Why couldn't we cast him out, they said.
And our Lord didn't reply, well, because you're only human beings, you know, and I'm the Son of God, that's why. No. He said, because of your little faith. For if you had faith only as a grain of mustard seed, said he, you would say to this mountain bee, be removed, and it would be removed, and nothing should be impossible to you. And then again, when he repeated the similar lesson, so we read in Mark chapter eleven, he said to the apostles apropos of the withered fig tree.
Therefore, whatsoever things you ask in prayer, ask, believe that you have them, and you shall have them. Authority. Seed, said he. You would say to this mountain, be you removed, and it would be removed, and nothing should be impossible to you. And then again, when he repeated the similar lesson, so we read in Mark chapter eleven, he said to the apostles apropos of the withered fig tree, therefore, whatsoever things you ask in prayer, ask, believe that you have them, and you shall have them.
Authority in prayer. Up here, we shall need to explain a thing or two to ourselves, shouldn't we? Because of your lack of faith, your little faith, the phrase has worried a lot of people who feel like the father who came to our Lord with his request and had to admit to the Lord that his faith was very weak and very wobbly and said, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. And I suspect most of us, most of the time, feel very much like him.
Um, does that mean that you never get anything unless your faith is one hundred percent strong. Well, no, it doesn't mean that at all, does it? Some people, of course, make that mistake when it comes to the very basics of salvation. I have had people say to me on times, uh, you know, did I hear you say that you are sure of salvation? I said, yes, yes, that's what I was conveying. Oh, they said, you must have very strong faith. As if, when it comes to salvation, uh, the stronger your faith, the more secure your salvation is.
That's nonsense, isn't it? Our salvation doesn't depend on our faith as a work, which we have to do up to a certain standard, and if our faith isn't strong enough, then we don't get saved, but if it is strong enough, we do get saved. Though, sometimes, uh, some believers fall, even believers fall into that mistake, don't they? I remember in the far distant past, someone coming to me and saying they'd woken up to the fact that they, perhaps they weren't saved after all. I said, how is that? Well, they said, you know, um, you'll say it says in the Bible that the devils believe and tremble, and that doesn't do them any good in particular.
Now, mm, I was listening to a preacher the other night, and he said, just any old kind of faith isn't good enough, you know. I mean, even the devils believe, and they tremble, and they don't normally get converted. I mean, are you sure that when you believed, you had the right kind of faith? And the good person that was talking to me said, you see, I began to think, well, it's a long time now since I believed. Well, um, wait a minute, did I have the right kind of faith? Can't remember now. Well, perhaps I didn't. If I didn't, I'm not saved after all. What shall I do? So, without further ado, the good person got down on his knees, you'll see, and said, well, if I wasn't saved, well, I'm going to be saved now, so here we go, and I'm, it's going to be the right kind of faith now.
So, summing up all the best things he knew about faith and how to exercise the right kind of faith, and it would be faith in the Lord and nothing else, and uh, when he got himself screwed up to the right sort of pitch, then he, he prayed a prayer of commitment, I believe. Felt a lot better. But you know, two days later, the old doubts came again. Yeah, when you kneeled down the other day and you trusted the sages, you said, are you sure? That was absolutely the right kind of faith. There weren't any wrong elements in it. And so the trouble went on, day after day, and week after week, and month after month, till it had the poor man nearly insane.
What was his mistake? Well, first in thinking that salvation depends upon the strength of our faith. Doesn't, does it? You'll say. Faith in that sense, when it comes to salvation, is not a work that you have to do a hundred percent correctly, and if you don't do it a hundred percent correctly, you won't be saved. That would make faith a merit, wouldn't it? That earns salvation by being done a hundred percent the correct way, and that is not true. Listen to the poor man coming to ask for his son to be delivered from the demon, and our Lord said, well, if you have faith, my good man.
Oh, he replied, Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief. And our Lord replied, I shouldn't think of doing anything of the sort, my man. Not until you can believe a hundred percent will I consent to do anything for you. Of course he didn't. And there was that other famous occasion, wasn't there, uh, you'll see, uh, when Peter, uh, got out of the boat and was walking on the water to come to the Lord. And for a while his walk went well. And then seeing the wind and the wave, so Matthew says, I don't know how he managed to see the wind, but he saw the wave anyway. Uh, he he he began to fear and began to sink.
And as he sank and the water came up around his ribs, he cried out, Lord, save me. And the Lord said what? I wouldn't think of doing it, oh you of little faith. Why did you doubt Peter? And stretching out his foot, he puts him on the head and said, get under du. I wouldn't begin to think of saving you if you dare doubt me like that. Well, of course he didn't, did he? The moment Peter cried, Lord, save me, the blessed Lord stretched out his arm and lifted him up and stood him up on the water. Now he knew he was safe. And then the Lord gave him a kindly lecture on the fact that his faith had been so weak when it shouldn't have been.
Yeah? So whether we are an unbeliever coming to Christ for the gift of eternal life, forgiveness, and salvation, or whether we are a believer in the midst of life's walk and struggle. It is not that unless we have a hundred percent good faith, complete faith, absolutely strong faith, it is not that unless we have that, Christ will not save or help us. Of course it isn't. But when it comes to our work for God, that's another situation, isn't it? Let me use an analogy.
I had a friend once, and one night he went upstairs to his little girl who was coming up to the age of eleven and found her very late at night still awake and anxiously tossing in her bed. And drawing near gently as her father, he asked her, uh, what was troubling her. And eventually it came out, she said, Dad, if I don't pass the eleven plus, will you still love me? What do you suppose the father said? He said, look here, this is disgraceful. Fancy you, you under my roof and in one of my beds and daring to doubt my love. Put you out of the house tomorrow morning, I will.
And if you don't pass the eleven pla- plus, I shall disown you forever. Of course, he didn't do. Here was the child beset with fears, and fears leading to imagining that perhaps if she didn't do well in the exam, dad would, uh, no longer love her. He did what you would have done, sir, didn't he? That father put his arms around her and cuddled her and kissed her and said whether she passed it or not made no difference to the fact he loved her now and would love her still. Ah, isn't that a wonderful comfort to us? In all life's works and troubles and difficulties, God loves us.
He loved us while we were still sinners, he'll go on loving us even when we're saints on those same conditions. He loves us eternally. In spite of our doubts. Ah yes, but suppose that same father, being a businessman, had a grown-up son in New York. And the boy was with his father in the business, and for some reason had to, uh, attend an auction by Sotheby's or somebody in New York. And a certain item came up for sale, and the boy saw an opportunity. It would cost, of course, six million, but there you are.
Now, what was he to do? He got to make an, an instant decision. Should he go above the five million mark to six or should he not? Hm. Now he would need to have strong faith, wouldn't he? For if he dithered, somebody else would get whatever it was he was trying to buy, and the opportunity would be gone forever. Yeah, but suppose he, suppose he bid for it and got it, and then father was displeased, and he'd, uh, put father into debt for seven million or six million or whatever it was.
Um, well, you can understand why a man might dither, mightn't you? But it's no good, not in that kind of situation, dithering. If he's going to do the successful deal, he's got to be so persuaded of his father's will and the principles of the firm that he can go and act at once and be assured that the firm and father will back him up. And if he hasn't got that confidence, well, he won't do very many good deals. So when it comes to us as servants of the Lord, doing the work of God, there will be situations, won't there, where we shall be called upon to act in faith and not to dither.
And our authority in prayer will depend upon the firmness of our faith. Why couldn't we cast him out? Because of your little faith, said Christ. How shall I get firmness in faith as a servant of the Lord? The secret is given to us, isn't it, by our Lord three times over in the gospel by John, when he assures us that since his resurrection and ascension, we have his authority to come and pray in his name.
Now, these verses have often been quoted and have often proved a puzzle to many of us, haven't they? If you ask anything in my name, I will give it to you, says the Lord. And says somebody, well, I did ask, I, I asked for a new house, you see, my kitchen is so small, and I was asking the Lord, could he please let me have a new house with a nice modern kitchen, and he didn't answer. And here it says, if you ask anything in my name, I'll give it, and he didn't give it. So, so what are we to make of it there? Well, we could help ourselves, couldn't we, by reading those promises in their context. In John five fifteen, our Lord says, now if you, my word abides in you, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done to you.
He there is talking of himself as the great vine, and we are the branches in that vine, and God is the husbandman, the Father is the husbandman who tends us and daily looks to us the branches, and if need be, prunes us and cleanses us. His scheme is that he's going to produce the fruit of the gracious Holy Spirit, the fruit of Christ-likeness in our lives. And so the Father tends us, and the blessed Lord Jesus supplies the resources of love and of knowledge, so that we may produce Christian character.
It is in that context our Lord says, and if uh my word abide in you and I abide in you, you shall ask what you will. In this context, of course. In the refining of our characters, in the development of the fruit of the spirit in our lives. After all, we're not just bits of wood like a piece of a literal vine, are we? We're not altogether wooden, you'll see. Um, we are personalities, aren't we? And we have moderately good idea sometimes of where we need to be corrected still. We don't have to be just passive. We can come to the Lord. We can come to the great husbandman of the vine and say, no, Father, the Lord Jesus said, I may come in his name, and you will do what I ask if his words abide in me.
His word tells me that in this particular thing and in this particular attitude, I'm not right as I should be. He says, if I come and pray according to his word, you will grant me the request. And so he will. For God doesn't mock us. When it comes to the development of the Spirit's fruit in our lives and the removal of things that hinder that development, we can come and pray according to Christ's word, and the Father will grant our requests.
The other two occasions in chapter fourteen and chapter sixteen are talking explicitly of the work that we do for the Lord. Whatever it is he has given to us, we have the authority, says the Lord Jesus, to come and ask in his name. What does it mean to ask in the name of the Lord Jesus? Why, first of all, the name of the Lord Jesus reminds us of who he is and what his merits are. Oh, my beloved brethren, so that we may strengthen our confidence and thus increase our authority in prayer, would we not be wise from time to time to think, as we come into the presence of God, of the merit of the Lord Jesus.
We could not possibly ask something that would be in excess of what he deserves, could we? Could we ever ask something of the Father to do in the work of God, and the Father saying, I'm sorry, my son, he deserves a lot, but he doesn't quite deserve that. All of my little heart would begin to take in what are the merits of the Lord Jesus? What are the proportions of his merit?
That I may pray in that name and according to those methods. And praying in his name means that I come and pray with his authority, does it not? How can I pray with the authority of Christ? Why, again, as I come guided by his word, guided by what it is the Father's pleasure to do for Christ. Oh, what will God not do for his Son? If I come, therefore, in the name of Christ, with the authority of Christ, to ask for something which I can be absolutely sure that the Lord Jesus will ask, and I can ask with his authority, can I not?
Oh, I love to think of that picture that we have in Acts four. The early Christians had met the first big bit of opposition in their Christian testimony. The crowds were getting converted, three thousand one day, up to five thousand the next, when the high priest and the captain of the temple came upon them and put them in prison, then held a court of inquiry and forbade them to preach any more in the name of Jesus. And then, says Luke, they let them go. And the apostles came to the wait- their waiting fellow believers, and they held a prayer meeting.
What a lovely prayer meeting it was. We ask you, Lord, if it were possible, if it were at all your will, um, would you ever consider, um, glorifying the name of... No, of course they didn't. No, no. Not with such feeble, cowardly prayers, uncertain and wobbly, did the early Christians pray for the vindication of the name of Christ. Let the opposition be what it will. As they came to prayer, they let their mind dwell for a moment on the greatness of God, said they, O Lord, thou that didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that in them is.
They filled their hearts with the sense of the vastness and the greatness of God. Before whom the nations of the earth are but the dust of the balance and a drop in the bucket. And then they founded themselves on Holy Scripture. They said, you know what's happened here to your holy servant Jesus? Uh, that Pilate and Herod and the chief priests gathered together against him. Why? We have read of it in Holy Scripture, Lord, long since you told us of this, in the book of the Psalms. Why do the heathen rage and the nations imagine a vain thing, and they gather themselves together against your Lord Christ, the anointed?
You told us about it, Lord, and what's more, Lord, you've told us what you're going to do. Then shall the Lord laugh at them. Mock them in his derision. Yes, or what a slap in the face it was for the Jerusalem authorities when three days after they had crucified Christ, God raised him from the dead, and forty days afterwards set him at his own right hand. And because that is the declared will of God to vindicate and glorify the Lord Jesus. There is not a waver of an uncertainty in their prayers.
They pray in the name of the Lord Jesus. Grant, they said, to g- to thy servants to speak thy word with all boldness, while thou stretches forth thy hands to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of our Lord Jesus. Oh, my dear fellow believers, I have to challenge my own feeble heart as I face my little part in the work of the Lord. How I could come to it defeated oftentimes, couldn't I? Don't know whether this is going to be any good or not. Oh. Sure, we don't know which is going to prosper, this or that, do we, as we cast our bread upon the waters.
But this we do know of the objectives of God. They waver not. The Holy Spirit has come to earth to vindicate the Lord Jesus, to justify him in the eyes of men, to prove this world wrong, and to prove that Jesus is right, and that God has raised him to his own right hand in glory and given him a name which is above every name, not only in this world and the world to come. And we can pray it with all the unflinching authority of the name of the Lord Jesus, that God will honor and vindicate his son.
We can pray it as we work amongst his people too, can't we? We may not know what next to pray for. Very often, neither for ourselves nor for a particular company of God's people, would we know exactly what to pray for as we ought, but we know what God's purpose is. Then he justified, then he glorified, the glory being that of being conformed to the image of his son. We know what the goal is. And the Holy Spirit prays, you know, it is not automatic. The Holy Spirit doesn't say to himself, well, that's God's purpose, so I shan't need to pray about that.
No, indeed not. Of course, the Holy Spirit knows what God's purpose is, but the fulfillment of God's purpose does depend upon the great energies of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the Holy Spirit intercedes according to the mind of God. That is how God's purposes are done and fulfilled. As the gracious Holy Spirit intercedes for God's people according to God, and by his gracious energies brings about God's purpose result. And we, by his grace, have a part in that intercession too.
The bringing of God's people home to glory is not automatic, is it? It's not a thing of which we should say, ah, well, that's God's purpose, so I don't need to bother my head, it's going to be done anyway. We too should give ourselves to the Holy Spirit that we may join in those intercessions for God's people by which his purposes for his people are fulfilled. The Lord then graciously take his word and open our hearts and open our minds again to what we have known long since, by the glory of which we learn little by little as life goes on, to open our hearts and minds then to the wonder of the merit of Christ, to the certainty of God's purposes for him.
Thus to pray. Who shall say that the falling down of the barriers in Eastern Europe and in Russia, their sudden collapse was due only to economic factors, and not to the sustained prayers of millions of God's people over many years. God does not always act at once, does he? In the great warfares that go on in the heavenly places, Daniel, Daniel himself was informed that though his prayers were heard at the beginning, there was opposition in the heavenlies to the, to the answering of his prayers, and Daniel had to wait and persist until the opposition was overcome and the prayers were granted.
We shall find opposition too, but we do not have to wait until we get home to glory to see every bit of the opposition overcome. We may see a good deal of it overcome even now, surely. Men and women rescued from the power of darkness and brought into God's wonderful light, and the people of God saved from the snares of the evil one, and going on being kept from the world and ever more like the Savior. Indeed, it is not merely, is it, in the great affairs of nations that our blessed Lord hears our prayers and vindicates his son, but in the quiet of a small meeting, where we have met perhaps on routine occasions, but where people have prayed in the name of the Lord Jesus, and God, who has known us from all eternity, chosen us and saved us, is pleased to hear those prayers and puts forth his energy, and God's people are moved that next step on their way to
final glory. The Lord uses that to encourage us that in our praying as servants of the Lord, our faith may be strong and our prayers authoritative. Shall we pray? And now, Lord, we come to thee. And best Lord, we are but apprentices in thy school. We ask now thy forgiveness for the many occasions upon which our hearts have been filled with doubts instead of fears. We do bless thee that thy love towards us is unchanged, even in spite of our doubts.
But we pray, Lord, that we may be strengthened in the inner man, that thou wilt enlarge our minds as to the worth and merit of thy son. Impress upon us the wonderful authority that is placed in our hands as thy servants, as we ask in his name. Even now we do it, in the name of the Lord Jesus, we pray, who said we might thus come. O Lord, take thy word by thy spirit, implant it on our hearts, and strengthen us, we beseech thee, in our faith, that from tonight on we may be stronger, more authoritative in our prayers of thy as thy servants than we have ever been hitherto.
For his name's sake. Amen.
