3376. God’s Answer to Persistent Prayer

A Sermon Published On Thursday, October 16, 1913.

There is a sound of abundance of rain. {1Ki 18:41}

1. From the narrative we may learn that things can never be so bad that God cannot bring deliverance in his own time. The country had been parched in Palestine for over three years. Travellers in the East will tell you how brown and burned that country looks at all times, but how it must have appeared when the clouds cleaved together, and all the pastures were turned to dust, I can scarcely conceive. It must have been a terrible and pathetic sight, when the cattle had perished, and the people were ready to die, through famine and hunger. Yet, bad as it was, when the clouds had long ago vanished, when the children of three years old did not know what a drop of rain meant, when the skies seemed to be as brass above the heads of poor tortured mortals, it was then that the word of God came to Elijah, saying, “There shall yet be rain.” Courage, then! If the times should be full of danger, if there should be forebodings in the hearts of the bravest, if infidelity should threaten to put out the light of the gospel, or if Romanism should seem to blot out the name of Christ from under heaven, yet still God can appear. And if any one church is left, and the Lord commands the clouds that they rain no rain on her, and her hedges are broken down, and the wild boar out of the woods wastes her, and she seems to be utterly left, yet at the last hour of the day, when her hope all but expires, Jehovah, her friend, may come to her help. And it is so with us personally. If we are brought to the last handful of meal flour in the barrel, and the last drop of olive oil in the cruse; if we are brought so low that now it seems relief would come too late, or could not possibly come at all, the Lord, who has his way in the whirlwind, and who makes the clouds the dust of his feet, can now come from above. On cherubim and seraphim, very royally he can descend in speedy flight, and bring help to his needy servants. Let us, therefore, drive despair away. There is no room for that in Jehovah’s world. As long as he still reigns, let the earth rejoice, and let his people wait on him in hope.

2. Further, we learn another lesson, namely, that when prayer has been exercised concerning anything, it is our duty and our privilege to expect the answer. We pray sometimes, and receive nothing; but it is in most cases because we have asked amiss: or if we are quite sure that our request was a right one, yet we have forgotten the canon or the law which says, “Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering, for he who wavers is like the waves of the sea driven by the wind and tossed: do not let that man expect to receive anything from the Lord.” Now, if we ask believingly, we are quite sure to ask expectantly. We shall go up to the top of Carmel to look out for the cloud, if we have believingly sought for the rain. We shall still send Gehazi seven times if he perceives no signal of mercy at the first, and we shall continue in persistent prayer, still believing that Jehovah cannot lie, and will, as surely as he lives, himself be as good as his word, and fulfil his promise to those who trust him.

3. How bold it was of Elijah to go to Ahab, even before that cloud had been seen, before he had sent his servant to look for it, and to say to him, “There is a sound of abundance of rain!” What was that sound? I do not know. I do not suppose that Ahab heard it, or that anyone else, except Elijah, recognised it. The ears of true faith are very sharp and keen. She hears the coming of the blessing, the footsteps of the angels as they draw near by way of Jacob’s ladder. God has heard her, and she hears her God. God is quick to hear her whispers and her thoughts, and she knows “the secret of the Lord,” for it “is with those who fear him,” and long before the eye has seen, or the ear has heard, or it has entered into the heart of man to imagine it, she perceives that the blessing is coming. There are certain sacred instincts which belong to the faith of God’s elect, which faith always comes from God. We must remember its divine origin, and it keeps up its acquaintanceship with the eternal Father by whom it was begotten. Just as the shell picked up from the deep sea, which always continues to whisper hoarsely of the sea from which it came, so faith continues to hear the sound of Jehovah’s goings. If no one else hears them, she perceives them.

4. I thought of using this fact tonight as an illustration of the truth that there are certain signs which faith can see of a coming revival in a church; we will take that first; then, there are certain signs which faith can perceive of coming joy and peace in an individual heart — of that secondly.

5. I. In the first place: — THERE ARE CERTAIN SIGNS AND TOKENS FOR GOOD WHICH PRAYERFUL FAITH CLEARLY PERCEIVES WHEN AN AWAKENING, A GENUINE REVIVAL IS ABOUT TO COME.

6. What are these signs? I do not know that they are perceptible at this time throughout the churches of London: I do not know that they are perceptible anywhere, but I do know that wherever they are, they are the shadows which coming events cast before them, and one of the first of them is this: a growing dissatisfaction with the present state of things, and an increasing anxiety among the members of the church for the salvation of souls. To have no conversions is a very dreadful thing, but to be at ease without seeing conversions is at all times more dreadful by far. I could bear a suspension in the increase of the church, I think, with some degree of peace of mind, if I found all the members distressed and disturbed about it.

7. But if we should ever come to this impasse — may God grant we never may! — that we shall see no conversions, and yet all of us shall say, “Still, still our place is well attended: there are such and such people who come: we ourselves are fed with spiritual food, and therefore all is well.” I say, if it ever comes to that, it will be a thing to mourn over, both by day and night, for it will be a sign that the Spirit of God has for a while forsaken us. Oh! that the churches in London where the congregations are very small, and where the conversions are very few, would be clothed in sackcloth and cast ashes on their heads! Oh! that they would proclaim a day of fasting, and humble themselves before the Lord in the bitterness of their souls, for when it came to this, Jehovah’s hand would turn towards them in bounty, and they would soon become the joyful mothers of children. As long as a church is satisfied to be barren, she shall be barren; but when she cries out in the anguish of her spirit, then Jehovah shall remember her. He hears the cries of his people, but when she will not cry, but is at ease in desolate circumstances, then the desolation shall continue and the sorrows be multiplied.

8. Dear friends, it should be a matter of personal heart-searching for you how far any of you are at ease in Zion, how far you are satisfied without doing good yourselves, for in proportion as you are such, you are tainting the church with evil. But, on the other hand, let me enquire whether you have learned to sigh and cry for all the sin of this huge city, for all the abominations of this country of ours; whether you ever laid to heart the teeming millions of the heathen populations who are dying without a Saviour? If you do this, and if all of us do it, it cannot be long before God shall look at the earth and send a shower of grace, for that anxiety in Christian hearts is the sound of the coming of abundance of rain.

9. Another indication of a large blessing near at hand is, when this anxiety leads believers to be very earnest and persistent in prayer. When, one by one, in their own rooms they become the King’s reminders, and plead with him day and night: when by twos and threes in the family the prayer becomes fervent, and grows into a passionate cry, “Oh! God, remember the land, and send a blessing!” When in the churches, the spirit of prayer does not need to be aroused by appeals from the pulpit, but is general and spontaneous: when the members make it a matter of regular conscience and joyful privilege to attend the prayer meeting; and when there they do not preach sermons, nor deliver doctrinal disquisitions {elaborate dissertations} to their fellow men, but are like Elijah when he knelt at Carmel with his head between his knees, or else like Jacob, at Jabbok, when he said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” Then be sure of the blessing coming, for this sign never yet failed. Whenever and wherever there is this abounding prayer, there must be abounding blessing before long. Baal’s worshippers may pray to him, and he may not answer them; they may cut themselves with stones and cover his altar with their blood, but Jehovah always looks to the earnestness of his people, and will surely avenge his own elect, though he bears long with them. He will give them the desires of their hearts. May we see — as we have seen it in this church — may we see it renewed among us — may we see it in every part of Christendom, in every church in London, in every church throughout the whole British Empire, and in America, and wherever there are believers — a deep and awful anxiety for souls that will not let believers be quiet, but will give them to exercise an incessant pleading with God which will stir up his strength and cause him to make bare his arm.

10. A third sign, and a far more absolutely accurate one because it is the result of the other two, happens when ministers begin to take counsel with each other, and to say, “What must we do? The church is earnest; we, too, share the fervour; what must we do that we may be more useful, that we may win more for Christ?” It becomes the sign of a great blessing when men in the ministry will preach the gospel more fully, more simply, more affectionately, more in dependence on the Holy Spirit, than they have ever done before. In proportion as elocution shall be less regarded, rhetoric be less honoured, long words less admired, and simplicity, plainness of speech, boldness, and earnestness shall be sought after —— in that proportion, depend on it, the blessing will come. In vain the prayers of God’s people, and all their tears, in that place where the ministry gives out an uncertain sound.

11. How shall God bless his vineyard by a cloud in which there is no rain? How shall he water the plants of his own right-hand planting from a cistern that holds no water? Ah! brethren, if any of you have been guilty of expounding philosophical themes when he ought to have been preaching the simple gospel: if we have been guilty of trying to get poetic sentences and flowery phrases when our sentences ought to have been short and sharp, like daggers in the consciences of men: if we have lifted up a mere dogma, instead of exalting Christ, and have preached the letter and forgotten the spirit, may God forgive us this great offence, and help us from this time forward to begin to learn how to preach, to begin to sit at the feet of Jesus, and learn from him how to touch the springs of the human heart, and, by his Spirit’s power, lead men to cry, “What must we do to be saved?”

12. Brethren in Christ, who preach the gospel, it is in no spirit of mere criticism of the general ministry that I have offered those sentences. It is rather in criticism of us all, and loving counsel to us all. If we are to obtain a blessing, depend on it we must come nearer to the Cross. We must get to value human knowledge less, and to value Christ infinitely more, and then, having these, we must cry aloud and not spare, and our message must always be concerning salvation. We must leave for a time the more difficult and deep things of God, and we must keep hammering away at this one thing with all our might, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. Where this shall became commonly the case there shall be the sound of an abundance of rain. May God send us more Haliburtons, more McCheynes, more Harrington Evans, more men of the stamp of John Newton, Mr. Whitfield, and the Wesleys, and when we have these we may take it as an indication that God is blessing us, and that it is a sound of abundance of rain.

13. I have not quite concluded the list of these favourable signs. There will be a certainty that the rain is falling, the first few drops will be wetting the sensitive pavement of the Christian church, when we shall see the doctrine of individual responsibility fully felt and carried out into individual action. I believe — I do not know whether there are any of you among them — that there are a great multitude of Christian people who think that religion is a thing for ministers, and that ministers ought to do all they can for the spread of the knowledge of the true religion. Of course, they include City Missionaries, Bible women, and good people who can give all their time to such work; but the notion that every saved man is to be a minister in some sense, that every converted woman has also her share of ministry to perform for Christ, that it is not one member of the body that is to be active, while all the others are to be torpid and idle — of this they do not dream. When it shall be believed that there is as much work for the foot as there is for the head, and as much for the unattractive parts as for those that have abundant beauty, when the poor shall feel that the church cannot do without them, and the rich shall perceive that they have their work to do in the circles in which they move: when the illiterate shall talk about Christ as well as the educated, when the nurse-maid, and the servant in the kitchen, and the workman at the loom and plough, shall all be moved by one common impulse: when the divine enthusiasm shall blaze in the learned and in the ignorant: when it shall flash up in the heart of the member of Parliament, when it shall be found in the highest and lowest places of the land: when every Christian shall feel that he is not his own, but bought with a price: when he shall see the blood-mark stamped on him, and say with the apostle, “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus”: when the consecrated life shall be lived, not in cloisters and nunneries, but in cottages, and mansions, and palaces, in the abodes of wealth and fashion, as in the dwelling-places of poverty: when God’s men go out into the world as God’s men, feeling that they are to live for him fully, as Paul lived for him fully, feeling that for them to live is indeed Christ — then, brethren, there will be a sound of an abundance of rain. Truly, truly, I say to you, you do not need to think of the conversion of Japan, and India, and China, nor of Ethiopia’s turning to God. We want to be converted to God ourselves first. The church of God is not fit to have a great blessing yet. If she is not first of all baptized in the Holy Spirit and in fire, she will not be qualified to do the great deeds that God intends her to do before long. The world shall be saved, but the church must first be quickened. The nations shall be converted, but the church of God must, first of all, be aroused. The fire shall go out from Zion, but it must first burn furiously on Zion’s own hearth. Out of nothing comes nothing, and if the church degenerates into nothing she will do nothing. It is only when she herself possesses the divine life in the fullest vigour that she shall be capable of doing work for God which shall glorify the name of the Lord Jesus. The church has gotten all the conversions now that she is qualified to get. God always gives every church as big a blessing as it is fit to have, and if it qualifies itself for more, it shall have more. God treats his churches as parents treat their sons. They give them only a little money when they are children; pence will do: but when they get to be young men, they shall have even more. We have very little because we are fit to possess and use very little. We are not faithful in what is given to us, and if the one talent often lies wrapped in a napkin, how can we expect to have five or ten entrusted to us?

14. May God stir up the church, then, in the way which I have tried to depict, and there will be “a sound of abundance of rain.”

15. II. And now to change the line of thought, I want to: — HAVE A FEW MINUTES’ QUIET TALK WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE DISPIRITED.

16. Some of you have gotten into Giant Despair’s castle. You have had a taste of his cruel crab tree cudgel {club} recently. You have been taken to see the dead men’s bones outside the castle, and you have been told that there is nothing for you but destruction. Now, there is, I believe, for such as you are, with all your sad distress of mind, it is an indication that the famine and drought of your soul shall soon end. Such a condition as yours cannot always be. There are always signs of abundance of rain. Perhaps there are some such signs now in you.

17. This is one: God always intends to bless us, when he empties us completely. Then we get to know that we are nothing, and have nothing unless he fills us with his hidden treasure. If you were self-confident, and felt that you could rally yourself, that you still had some resources to fall back on, it is very likely that your present state would continue; but if you are brought down to the ground, you cannot get any lower, and you shall soon be lifted up. If it has come to be the darkest hour in the night, the day will soon dawn, the first beams will soon streak and redden the horizon. When you become so poor and needy that you dare not trust yourself in anything, feel as if you scarcely could open your mouth, but cry, “Open my lips”; feel as if your wisdom were all turned to folly, and your wit all gone, like a man at sea, staggering to and fro, reeling like a drunken man; when you feel that you cannot help yourself, then remember the old proverb, that “man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.” You must empty the pitcher before you can fill it. You must get the purse emptied of all the counterfeit money before you can put in the genuine coin. You must throw the chaff out of the bushel before you can put the wheat in. And God is emptying you of your self-sufficiency and carnal trust in order that now there may be a full Christ for empty sinners, a rich Christ for poverty-stricken sinners. If you have a mouldy crust of your own, you shall not have the bread of heaven. If you have one brass farthing left of your own merit, you shall not have Christ.

   ’Tis perfect poverty alone,

      That sets the soul at large:

   While we can call one mite our own,

      We get no full discharge.

   But let our debts be what they may,

      However great or small,

   As soon as we have nought to pay,

      Our God forgives us all.

18. Now, your being nothing, and having nothing, your being helplessly bankrupt in spiritual affairs, is a sign for good, and I thank the Master for it.

19. There is sure to be a sign of abundance of rain, too, when your soul begins to be unutterably miserable apart from Jesus Christ. If you could find comfort in the joys of this world, I should fear it would be a very long time before you would find peace. But if pleasures which were once so sweet have now become insipid or distasteful: if social joys are now shunned because you have an aching void within your heart which these cannot fill: if you get alone, and sigh, and cry because you want — you want you scarcely know what — but still, you feel you cannot rest until you find your God, that unrest, that dissatisfaction, and disturbance, and longing, and sighing, and pining all are good signs. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” I think I can hear in that longing of yours a sound of abundance of rain.

20. But there are better signs than any you can see in yourselves, for the most comforting evidences we can ever bring from self are generally only miserable comforters, like those of poor Job. They begin by comforting, and end by making us more wretched than before.

21. But here are some things that are signs of abundance of rain. The first is, God has given his Son to die for sinners. You are a sinner; you know it, and you feel it. Now, a sinner is a sacred thing. The Holy Spirit has made him so by declaring that Christ came to seek and to save just such. If God has given his dear Son to bleed on the tree as a substitute for guilt, surely he will deny nothing. “He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how will he not with him also freely give us all things?” Stand at the foot of the cross, and as you hear the blood of Jesus falling, drop by drop, surely in the ears of faith there is a sound of abundance of rain.

22. But he lives. He is gone away from the cross to heaven, where he lives and intercedes before his Father’s face. “Therefore also,” it is written, “he is able to save those to the uttermost who come to God by him, since he lives for ever to make intercession for them.” If you hear the voice of Jesus pleading with authority before the Father’s throne, you feel certain that God will not refuse his Son’s request, but will do to him according to his petition. So that here is another sound of abundance of rain. “He made intercession for the transgressors” — that is you again. He makes intercession for such as you are. Give him, then, your cause and plead, nor doubt the Father’s grace.

23. Another blessed sign of an abundance of mercy for poor burdened souls is the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has been given to us. It is a thing that we are to pray for, that the Holy Spirit may be poured out, but the Holy Spirit is poured out, was given to the whole church on the day of Pentecost, in order that he might remain with us for ever. The Holy Spirit, then, is here; the head of the present age of grace, ruling and reigning in the hearts of his people. But what does he come for? To convict of sin, to give us repentance, to show us Christ, to lead us to Christ, to work faith in us, to create all the spiritual graces within our souls. Oh friends, however barren and dead we may be, the Holy Spirit can quicken us; and therefore in the fact that he is given to his people there is another sign of abundance of rain.

24. But I think there is another we must not forget, and that is that there is a mercy seat. I like, when I feel my own sinfulness and corruption, to think that there is still a mercy seat. There it stands. I may not have gone to it as I ought; I may feel as if I never could go to it as I ought; my heart may be as heavy as a stone, but there is the mercy seat, and God intends to bless me, otherwise he would have taken that mercy seat away. He would have said, “No, I forbid you to pray; I will never hear you again.” But as long as there stands that blood-sprinkled mercy seat, why, who is it meant for? It is meant for the needy, surely; it is meant for those who need to pray, and the blood on it is an evidence that it is meant for the guilty who need pardon.

   The mercy-seat is open still,

   Here let my soul retreat.

The very fact that I may pray is another sign of an abundance of rain.

25. And once more — is it not a sign of an abundance of mercy to a poor devil-dragged sinner, who has been dragged, as it were, through a whole forest of temptations, through the brambles and briars of his sins, and who is all wounded, and torn, and ragged, and bleeding — is it not a sign of mercy to him that there is the invitation always ringing from the gospel, “Come to me all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”? That invitation always stands. It never ceases to call. This silver trumpet always sounds. The bell is always ringing: — 

   “Come and welcome, sinner, come.”

26. “Ho everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money, let him come: yes, come, buy wine and milk, without money, and without price.” What is that invitation for? Is it mockery? Is it scorn or sarcasm? Does God invite intending to repulse? Does he throw open the door of mercy meaning to shut it in the sinner’s face? Impossible. God is willing to receive and bless, for God invites most freely. And, notice that, he does more than invite: he commands, and with the command there is a threatening. “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved; he who does not believe shall be condemned.” He makes it a sin not to believe, a sin not to have mercy on yourselves, a sin not to take the mercy which he freely gives. Yes; he makes this the greatest of all sins. This is the sin which causes men to perish, that they do not believe in Christ. “He who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the Son of God.” Now, see how hearty God is in this matter. He first invites — will he reject you? Next, he commands you to come; can he cast you away when you do as he tells you to do? Then he threatens you, if you do not come. How his heart of generosity is displayed here! He cannot refuse to save you if you trust him. You, blackest, worst, and vilest, if you trust him, he cannot refuse you. He has threatened to destroy you if you do not trust; can he destroy you if you do? What a God would that be! No! cast yourselves on him. Fall flat on the promise which he gives you in his dear Son, and surely by doing so you shall feel that great rain for which your thirsty soul is longing, for the very invitation is a sound of abundance of rain.

27. Christian brothers and sisters, I dare say some of you sometimes get very dry, and feel as if you needed an abundance of rain. Well, that very sense of need, that inward craving, will be a sign of its coming. Continue much in prayer, even when you do not get a blessing in it. An esteemed clergyman gives the advice to his friends, if they do not have liberty in prayer, to be sure and use a form. I think that is about as bad advice as he could possibly have given. When you feel you do not have liberty in prayer, pray in order to get liberty. Do not leave the mercy seat until you do, but put up with no makeshifts. Do not resort to any of those legs of wood, and iron, and stone. Get to have real and living fellowship with Christ, and dread, above all things, the possibility of sham religion being put in the place of the real, living thing. Never be satisfied, dearly beloved, unless you live every day in communion with Christ. Do not be content without the continual presence of that gracious Sun of your soul, your blessed Saviour. Without him, this life is a very death, and the thought of the world to come a torment to the spirit. And when you feel you cannot do without him, without the reality of his assured presence, when services will not do, and the Bible itself will not do, without getting him, without getting heart-work and spirit-work, without getting the soul and sustenance of it, it is then that before long an abundant blessing will drop into your soul.

28. May the Lord make us uneasy and wretched without of him: make us hungry and thirsty apart from him. May the Lord make us covetous beyond all covetousness, after him, dissatisfied beyond all peace of mind, apart from him; and when we get to that he will feed us with bread to the full, and give us the wines on the lees well-refined, so that we may drink and rejoice. May God give a blessing to these words for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Exposition By C. H. Spurgeon {Mt 7}

While we are reading, let us also be adoring at the same time, for the words of Christ have a gracious divinity about them; they are infinite; they are omnipotent. There is a kind of life in them; a life which shares itself to those who hear them. Our Saviour did not preach sermons: he preached texts; all his sermons are full of golden sentences, not hammered gold-leaf, like those of men, but they are ingots of solid gold, and the gold of that land is good, the most fine gold; there is nothing like it. He preaches like this in the seventh chapter of Matthew.

1. “Do not judge so that you are not judged.

Do not become critics, especially in the act of worship. Probably there is no greater destroyer of profit in the hearing of the word than is the spirit of carping criticism.

1, 2. Do not judge so that you are not judged. For with whatever judgment you judge, you shall be judged: and with whatever measure you measure, it shall be measured to you again.

When the Lord comes in judgment, he might almost decline to mount the throne, for he might say, “These men have already tried and condemned each other; let their sentences stand.” If he were to judge us as we have judged others, who among us would stand? But we may rest assured that our fellow men will usually exercise towards us much the same judgment that we exercise towards them.

3. And why do you behold the mote that is in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the beam that is in your own eye?

It is a beam. You do not see it because it is in your own eye. How is it that you can be so severe towards what is in another, and so lenient towards yourself?

4, 5. Or how will you say to your brother, ‘Let me pull the mote out of your eye’; and, behold, a beam is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first cast the beam out of your own eye; and then you shall see clearly to cast the mote out of your brother’s eye.

There may be, dear friends, a great deal of hypocrisy about us, of which we are not aware, for when a man sees a fault in another, and tells him about it, he says, “You know I am a very plain-spoken person; there is no hypocrisy about me.” Well, but there is, and, according to the Saviour’s description, this may be sheer hypocrisy because meanwhile in your own eye there is something else worse than you see in your companion, and this you pass over, and this is simply untruthful dealing, and it amounts to hypocrisy. If you were really so zealous to make people see, you would begin by being zealous to see yourself, and if you were so concerned to have all eyes cleansed from impurity, you would begin by cleansing your own, or seeking to have them cleansed.

6. Do not give what is holy to the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and trample you.

It is a pity to talk about some of the secrets of our holy faith in any and every company. It would be almost profane to speak of them in the company of profane men. We know that they would not understand us; they would find occasion for jest and ridicule, and therefore our own reverence for holy things must cause us to put a finger on our lips when we are in the presence of profane people. Do not let us, however, carry out one precept to the exclusion of others. There are dogs that eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table. Drop them a crumb. And there are even swine that may yet be transformed; to whom the sight of a pearl might give some inkling of a better condition of heart. Do not cast the pearls before them, but you may show them to them sometimes when they are in as good a state of mind as they are likely to be in. It is ours to preach the gospel to every creature; that is a precept of Christ, and yet all creatures are not always in the condition to hear the gospel. We must choose our time. Yet even this I would not push too far. We are to preach the gospel in season and out of season. Oh! that we may be able to follow precepts as far as they are meant to go, and no further.

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

This is the simplest form of prayer. Follow up your prayer by the effort. “Knock, and it shall be opened to you.” Add force to your petitions and to your prayers. If the door blocks the way, knock until it is opened.

8. For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened.

One way or another you will get the blessing if you are only persevering, and blessed is the man who is a master of the art of asking, but does not forget the labour of seeking an entrance through the persistence of knocking.

9, 10. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son asks for bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?

Our Lord will give us the real thing. Sometimes we should be quite satisfied with the imitation of it. And sometimes we have to wait and be prepared for the reception of the real thing; it is infinitely better for us to wait for months than immediately to get a stone; better to wait for a fish than the next moment to have a scorpion. There were some in the wilderness who asked to be satisfied, and they were so, with the flesh of quails. They got their stones, they got their scorpions. But the Lord’s people may sometimes find that they have to wait for a while. God will only give them what is good for them.

11, 12. If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Therefore all things whatever you wish that men should do for you, even do so for them: for this is the law and the prophets.

What a wonderful condensation of the two tables of the law! May God help us to remember it. This is a golden rule, and he who follows that shall lead a golden life.

13, 14. Enter in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in there. Because narrow is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Do not be ashamed of being called narrow. Do not be ashamed of being supposed to lead a life of great precision and exactness. There is nothing very grand about breadth, after all. And I have noticed one thing: the broadest men I have ever met in the best sense have always kept to the narrow way, and the narrowest people I know are those who are so fond of the broad way. I could indicate some literature which professes to be very liberal; it is liberal indeed in finding fault with everyone who holds the gospel, but its tone is bitterness itself towards all the orthodox. Wormwood and gall are honey compared with what the liberal people generally pour out on those who keep close to the truth. I prefer to cultivate a broad spirit to a narrow heart, and then to talk about the breadth of the way.

15. Beware of false prophets.

But as long as he is a prophet, people will respect him; do not find fault with him, he is a clever man.

15-25. Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. We shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? Even so every good tree produces good fruit: but a corrupt tree produces bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not produce good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you shall know them. Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? and in your name have cast out demons; and in your name done many wonderful works?’ And then I will profess to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you who work iniquity.’ Therefore whoever hears these sayings of mine, and does them, I will compare him to a wise man, who built his house on a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house; and it did not fall: for it was founded on a rock.

For the best man will be tried, and perhaps all the more because he is such.

26-29. And everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them, shall be compared to a foolish man, who built his house on the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house, and it fell; and great was its fall.” And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished by his doctrine. For he taught them as one having authority, and not like the scribes.