The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

OF MERCIES. Many despise prayer: they despise it, because they do not understand it. He who knows how to use that sacred art of prayer will obtain so much by it, that from its very profitableness he will be led to speak of it with the highest reverence.

      4. 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. Only the other Sunday 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 to the Book of Exodus, and you will read, “The children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up to God by reason of the bondage.” And also note that just before the sea parted and made a highway for the Lord’s people through its bosom, Moses had prayed to the Lord, and cried earnestly to him, so that Jehovah said, “Why do you cry to me?” A few Sundays 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 Israel 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, “Oh 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 notice 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 pray; yes, 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.

      5. Indeed, and notice that as it has been in Sacred Writ, so it shall be with regard to greater things that are yet to happen in the fulfilment 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 properly, 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 puts forth her first green leaves we expect that the spring approaches, even so when prayer shall become more hearty and earnest, we may open our eyes, for the day of our redemption draws near. Great prayer is the preface of great mercy, and in proportion to our prayer is the blessing that we may expect.

      6. 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 you have shaken yourself from the dust, your Lord has taken his sword from the scabbard. When you have allowed your hands to hang down, and your knees to become feeble, he has left you to become scattered by your enemies; you have become barren and your children have been cut off; but when you have learned to cry, when you have begun to pray, God has restored to you the joy of his salvation, he has gladdened your heart, and multiplied your 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. You 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 II’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 has 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 to 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 does 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 do not stand in conjunction with the sun, then there is only 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 returns 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.

      7. 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 favour, 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 severe troubles, and mighty helps in great dangers, you have been able to say, “I cried to 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.

      8. And now some will say to me, “In what way do you regard prayer, then, as affecting the blessing? God, the Holy Spirit bestows prayer before the blessing; but in what way is prayer connected with the blessing?” I reply, prayer goes before the blessing in several senses.

      9. 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 foreshadows rain, so prayer foreshadows 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.

      10. Again: prayer goes before mercy, as the representative of it. Often times the king, in his progress through his