Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 507
“You also helping together byprayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by many on our behalf. For our rejoicing in this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the Grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world and more abundantly to you.” 2 Corinthians 1:11,12.
THE Apostle Paul had, by singular Providences, been delivered from imminent peril in Asia. During the great riot at Ephesus, when Demetrius and his fellow shrine-makers raised a great tumult against him, because they saw that their craft was in danger, Paul’s life was greatly in jeopardy. Consequently he writes, “We were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life.” The Apostle attributes to God, alone, his singular preservation. And if he referred also to the occasion when he was stoned and left for dead, there is much appropriateness in his blessing “God which raised the dead.”
The Apostle, moreover, argues from the fact that God had thus delivered him in the past, and was still his helper in the present, that He would be with him also in the future. Paul is a master at all arithmetic—his faith was always a ready-reckoner—we here find him computing by the Believer’s Rule of Three. He argues from the past to the present, and from the present to things yet to come. The verse preceding our text is a brilliant example of this arriving at a comfortable conclusion by the Rule of Three—“Who delivered us from so great a death and does deliver: in whom we trust that He will yet deliver us.”
Because our God is, “the same yesterday, today and forever,” His love in time past is an infallible assurance of His kindness today, and an equally certain pledge of His faithfulness on the morrow. Whatever our circumstances may be, however perplexed may be our pathway, and however dark our horizon, if we argue by the rule of, “He has, He does, He will,” our comfort can never be destroyed. Courage, then, O you afflicted seed of Israel. If you had a changeable God to deal with, your souls might be full of bitterness—but because He is, “the same yesterday, today and forever,” every repeated manifestation of His Grace should make it more easy for you to rest upon Him. Every renewed experience of His fidelity should confirm your confidence in His Grace. May the most blessed Spirit teach us to grow in holy confidence in our ever faithful Lord.
Although our Apostle thus acknowledged God’s hand, and God’s hand alone, in his deliverance, yet he was not so foolish as to deny or undervalue the second causes. On the contrary, having first praised the God of All Comfort, he now remembers with gratitude the earnest prayers of the many loving intercessors. Gratitude to God must never become an excuse for ingratitude to man. It is true that Jehovah shielded the Apostle of the Gentiles, but He did it in answer to prayer. The chosen vessel was not broken by the rod of the wicked, for the outstretched hand of the God of Heaven was his defense—but that hand was outstretched because the people of Corinth, and the saints of God everywhere had prevailed at the Throne of Grace by their united supplications.
With gratitude those successful pleadings are mentioned in the text, “You also helping together by prayer for us,” and he desires the Brothers and Sisters now to unite their praises with his, “that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by many on our behalf.” He adds that he has a claim upon their love since he was not as some who were unfaithful to their trust, but his conscience was clear that he had preached the Word simply and with sincerity.
While speaking upon these topics, may the anointing Spirit now descend to make them profitable to us. We shall, first, acknowledge the power of united prayer. Secondly, excite you to united praise. And then, in the third place, urge our joyful claim upon you—a claim which is not ours alone, but belongs to all ministers of God who in sincerity labor for souls.
I. First, then, dear Friends, it is my duty and my privilege this morning to ACKNOWLEDGE THE POWER OF UNITED PRAYER.
It has pleased God to make prayer the abounding and rejoicing river through which most of our choice mercies flow to us. It is the golden key which unlocks the well-stored granaries of our heavenly Joseph. It is written upon each of the mercies of the Covenant, “For this will I be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them.” There are mercies which come unsought, for God is found of them that sought not for Him. But there are other favors which are only bestowed upon the men who ask, and therefore receive—who seek, and therefore find—who knock, and therefore gain an entrance.
Why God has been pleased to command us to pray at all it is not difficult to discover, for prayer glorifies God, by putting man in the most humble posture of worship. The creature in prayer acknowledges his Creator with reverence and confesses Him to be the giver of every good and perfect gift. The eye is lifted up to behold the Glory of the Lord, while the knees are bent to the earth in the lowliness of acknowledged weakness. Though prayer is not the highest mode of adoration, or otherwise it would be continued by the saints in Heaven, yet it is the most humble, and so the most fitting, to set forth the Glory of the Perfect One as it is beheld by imperfect flesh and blood.