Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2437
“For this cause shall everyone thatis godly pray unto You in a time when You may be found.” Psalm 32:6.
ALL men are not godly. Alas, the ungodly are the great majority of the human race! And all men who are, to some extent, godly, are not equally godly. The man who fears God and desires to truly know Him has some little measure of godliness. The man who has begun to trust the Savior whom God has set forth as the great Propitiation for sin has a blessed measure of godliness. The man whose communion with God is constant, whose earnest prayers and penitential tears are often observed of the great Father, and who sighs after fuller and deeper acquaintance with the Lord—this man is godly in a still higher sense. And he who, by continual fellowship with God has become like He, upon whom the image of Christ has been photographed, for he has looked on Him so long and rejoiced in Him so intensely—he is the godly man! The man who finds his God everywhere, who sees Him in all the works of his hands. The man who traces everything to God—whether it is joyful or calamitous—this is the godly man. The man who looks to God for everything, takes every suit to the Throne of Grace and every petition to the Mercy Seat—the man who could not live without his God, to whom God is his exceeding joy, the help and the health of his countenance, the man who dwells in God—this is the godly man. This is the man who shall dwell forever with God, for he has a Godlike-ness given to him and, in the Lord’s good time, he shall be called away to that blessed place where he shall see God and shall rejoice before Him forever and ever!
Judge yourself, dear Hearers, by these tests, whether you are godly or not. Let conscience make sure work about this matter. Possibly, while I am preaching, you may be helped to perform this very necessary work of self-examination. The text, itself, is a test by which we may tell whether we are among the godly—“For this cause shall everyone that is godly pray unto You in a time when You may be found.”
In these words we have, first, the universal mark of godly men. They pray unto God. Then we have, secondly, a potent motive for praying—“For this cause shall everyone that is godly pray unto You.” And then, thirdly, we have the special occasion when prayer is most useful, the occasion of which the godly avail themselves abundantly—they shall “pray unto You in a time when You may be found.” All these points are well worthy of our earnest consideration.
I. The first is, THE UNIVERSAL MARK OF GODLINESS—“For this cause shall everyone that is godly pray unto
You.”
When a man is beginning to be godly, this is the first sign of the change that is being worked in him, “Behold, he prays.” Prayer is the mark of godliness in its infancy. Until he has come to pleading and petitioning, we cannot be sure that the Divine life is in him at all. There may be desires, but if they never turn to prayers, we may fear that they are as the morning cloud and as the early dew—which soon pass away. There may be some signs of holy thought about the man, but if that thought never deepens into prayer, we may be afraid that the thought will be like the seed sown upon the hard highway which the birds of the air will soon devour. But when the man comes to real pleading terms with God—when he cannot rest without pouring out his heart at the Mercy Seat—you begin to hope that now he is, indeed, a godly man! Prayer is the breath of life in the newborn Believer! Prayer is the first cry by which it is known that the newborn child truly lives! If he does not pray, you may suspect that he has only a name to live—and that he lacks true spiritual life.
And as prayer is the mark of godliness in its infancy, it is equally the mark of godliness in all stages of its growth. The man who has most Grace will pray most. Take my word for it as certain that when you and I have most Grace, we may judge of it by the fact that there is more of prayer and praise in us than there was before. If you pray less than you once did, then judge yourself to be less devout, to be less in fellowship with God, to be, in fact, less godly! I know of no better thermometer to your spiritual temperature than this—the measure of the intensity of your prayer. I am not speaking about the quantity of it, for there are some who, for a pretense, make long prayers. I am speaking about the reality of it, the intensity of it. Prayer is best measured by weight rather than by length and breadth and, in proportion as you grow in Grace, you will grow in prayerfulness, depend upon it! When the child of God reaches the measure of the fullness of the stature of a man in Christ Jesus, then he becomes like Elijah, a man mighty in prayer. One such man in a Church may save it from ruin! I go further and say that one such man in a nation may bring down upon it untold blessings! He is the godli-est man who has most power with God in his secret pleadings—and he who has most power with God in his secret pleadings has it because he abounds in godliness! Everyone that is godly shall pray unto the Lord, whether he is but the babe in Grace who lisps his few broken sentences, or the strong man in Christ who lays hold upon the Covenant Angel with Jacob’s mighty resolve, “I will not let You go, except You bless me.” The prayers may vary as the degree of godliness differs, but every godly man has, from the beginning to the end of his spiritual life, this distinguishing mark, “Behold, he prays.”