Responsibility of prayer-leaders.
The message sent to Isaiah, the prophet of God, was this: "Pray for us; be our leader, our intercessor." "Wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that is left." Scripture singles out Samuel and Moses as great prayer-leaders, or intercessors, but we can add Joshua, David, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Apostle Paul, drawing further illustrations from each of these. The Prophet Jeremiah has a very striking sentence, which indicates the power that prayer-leaders have with God: "Then said the Lord unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be toward this people" (Jeremiah 15:1). Isaiah, in our text, was sought by Hezekiah in his trouble, because he was a prayer-leader, an intercessor. We note that the things about men which are really most important are not the things which most readily attract attention. We need to get the view of men which God takes, if we would get the true view. Some of the best gifts bestowed on the Christian Church are undervalued; the endowments which give men public prominence are thought much more of than those spiritual powers which are men's best possessions. To some men God gives, in unusual measure, the power of prayer. There is a remarkable difference between good men in this gift and power of prayer. We see the difference in our children. Some of them are able to move and persuade us so that we find it most difficult to refuse them anything. And men and women seem to have a like power in their relations with God—a most responsible power.,Some of us can never rise above the orderly habit of prayer, and treat it as a matter of duty; but others have such praying frames of mind that, at any moment, they seem able to go in to God. There are men among us who are true prayer-leaders—whose utterance is full of petition, who are able to seize the souls of their fellow-worshippers, be their mouthpiece, and carry their desires within the veil; while other good men can only pray before us, and fail to awaken responsive prayer-feelings in our hearts.
I. THE GREATNESS OF PRAYER THAT RISES TO BE INTERCESSION. Man's power of prayer is a faculty full of high possibilities. It may rise even to this—it may go beyond all self-spheres, and become intercessory. While prayer keeps in the self-sphere there is a certain narrowness and even meanness about it. It is all concerned with what we want, and what we feel, and we are greatly comforted if we have any fervour of emotion in such prayer. But we feel that a course of daily prayer from which the interceding element is removed would be most injurious to the spiritual life. It lacks the generous, sympathetic, unselfish element, and it will very soon lack fervour and faith. No one can long keep up a prayerful life, and persist in praying altogether about himself. Power comes, love grows, when prayer includes intercession. Limitations of earnestness and importunity pass away; the soul is free to urge its pleas with persevering instancy; we can ask for another what we dare not fashion into a prayer for ourselves. The prayers of Scripture are, for the most part, intercessory. Illustrate—Abraham's for Sodom; Moses', Joshua's, Samuel's, for the people of Israel in their distresses. Daniel prays with his window open towards desolate Jerusalem, that he may be reminded of the captive people. Our last sight of Job finds him in the attitude of the mediator, praying for God's mercy on his mistaken and cruel friends. And the Apostle Paul writes again and again of the constancy of his intercessions. We may learn the secret of the poverty and formality of much Christian praying. It has so little intercession in it. When some beloved friend is smitten down with imperilling sickness, our prayer suddenly gains strength, and becomes a thing full of fervour and pathos. All our souls then go out in strong crying and tears. But this power might be in our praying always. We might be not only prayerful men, but also prayer-leaders, carrying the burdens of others to the throne of grace, and ourselves sanctified through the carrying.
II. THE POWER OF INTERCESSION THAT MAY BE IN A SINGLE INDIVIDUAL. Any one of us may have the gift of intercession. One man, one woman, even one child, may bring down the Divine benedictions as refreshing rains upon us. We may kneel for others before God. We may win the blessing, prevailing with God, for men. Illustrate from the life of Moses. Note three great interceding-times:
Or from the life of Samuel, who may be regarded as the most consistently beautiful character in the Bible. Note two cases:
But what responsibilities rest on such men! On such men living amongst us now! Who can tell what the Church of God would become, if interceders would but intercede? Plead that, in these times, we need to be often recalled to the power of prayer. "We have not, because we ask not." The Prophet Isaiah has a wonderful conception. He represents God as looking out upon men in their sin and sorrow and shame, and saying, "I saw that there was no man, and I wondered that there was no intercessor." It may be so still God may look into our family lives, and wonder that there is no intercessor. He may look at our Churches, and wonder that there is no intercessor. Oh for a multiplying of men and women who say, "I can pray. I can intercede. I can plead for Jerusalem"!—R.T.
God's message to the troubled.
"Thus saith Jehovah, Be not afraid." We have here the Divine response, through Isaiah, as the national intercessor. The circumstances, the boastings, the threatenings, were eminently calculated to produce fear, both in Isaiah and in the people. There was such a show of material strength as Elisha's servant saw at Dothan, which sent him to his master full of fears. The answer is such as Elisha gave when he made the servant see what it was to have God on their side. God in the city was abundant security against Assyria outside the city, and Hezekiah need not be afraid. God's message to those who seek him in their troubles is always this: "Be not afraid;" "I am with you." Our fears only stay with us when our eyes are so dim that we cannot see God. Fear goes when he "lifts the light of his countenance upon us." Matthew Henry says, "Those who have made God their enemy we have no reason to be afraid of, for they are marked for ruin; and though they may hiss, they cannot hurt." Dr. A. Raleigh remarks that every creature is liable to fear; there can only be one Being in the universe absolutely and for ever free from that liability—he who knows everything and controls everything.
1. The great mysteries of existence have a tendency to produce fear. There am few thoughtful persons who do not feel the shadow of them on their path. They are such things as the existence of evil, sin, misery in the universe, under the government of an infinitely powerful and infinitely benevolent Being. There is great mystery about the plan of Divine providence in the world. Job, David, Jeremiah, were all perplexed and appalled by the sight of the afflictions of the righteous and the prosperity of the wicked.
2. There are certain possibilities, the thought of which has a tendency to darken the spirit with fear. The most sanguine and cheerful can hardly ever imagine, far less expect, a wholly uncheckered future. The worst of all earthly calamities is the possibility of spiritual failure, ending in a final exclusion from the presence of God and the joys of the blessed. Whatsoever form our fear may take, whatsoever may be the trouble or the alarm out of which it grows, if the fear drives us to God, we shall always be sure of getting this response, "Be not afraid." The one answer to all mysteries is this: "God is, God lives; and I can trust him." The one strength with which to meet all the possibilities, and bear all the calamities, of life is this, "He maketh all things work together for good." Fully unfolded, the response of God is given in Isaiah 41:10. "Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God."—R.T.