Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2637
“Whatever burden or whatever sickness there is: then what prayer or what supplication shall be made of any man, or of all Your people Israel, when everyone shall know his own burden and his own grief, and shall spread forth his hands in this house: then hear You from Heaven, Your dwelling place, and forgive, and render unto every man according unto all his ways, whose heart You know (for You, only, know the hearts of the children of men).” 2 Chronicles 6:28-30.
THE Temple was intended to be the center of prayer for all the children of Israel. Those who could do so went up to it a certain number of times every year. Others, who were too far away to go, prayed with their window open towards Jerusalem, for there was the Mercy Seat and beneath the wings of the overshadowing cherubim there dwelt that bright light of the Shekinah which was the index of the Presence of God in the midst of His people. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that when Solomon dedicated to the Lord the Temple which he had built, his great petition was that God would hear every prayer that should be offered in that place or toward that place! He wished the Temple to always be to Israel the token that God’s memorial is that He hears prayer. Solomon therefore presented a wonderfully comprehensive series of supplications in which he appears to have included all the sorrowful conditions of the nation and all the troubles that were likely to fall upon the chosen people.
But this part of his prayer, which we are now to consider, seems as though it were intended to gather up anything that the suppliant might possibly have left out. We always think that we are among the great things—that we are out upon the deep seas—when we can get among the “whatevers.” “Whatever burden or whatever sickness there is: then what prayer or what supplication shall be made of any man, or of all Your people Israel…then hear You from Heaven, Your dwelling place, and forgive.” It is a sort of miscellaneous sentence, taking up all the stragglers—the lots that are out of the catalog—those that could not be placed under any distinct head. And they are here put under the general description of the “whatevers,” that every man whatever, who should know his own burden and his own grief, and the plague of his own heart, should turn his eye and his prayer toward Jerusalem—and that God should then hear him and forgive him.
We have no sacred spot now, Beloved Friends, towards which we turn when we pray. The Ritualists talk a great deal about the importance of “the eastward position,” but I believe that any other position in the world—westward, southward, or northward—is just as good and that we may pray to God with equal acceptance whichever way we turn. Cow-per truly sings—
“Jesus, wherever Your people meet, There they behold Your Mercy Seat! Wherever they seek You, You are found, And everyplace is hallowed ground.”
Yet we have a Temple into which they cannot enter who think the mere materialistic building is the all-important matter, just as we have an Altar to which they have no right to approach so long as they are content with the visible and the external. Our Temple is the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ—“In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” When we pray, we turn our faces toward Him. He said to the Pharisees, “In this place is One greater than the Temple,” and so He is. Though He is to us of the same use as the Temple was to Israel, yet is He infinitely more precious and far greater than the Temple and whoever, whatever his trouble shall be, shall pray unto God with his face toward Jesus, looking to the matchless wounds by which He has redeemed us, or the glorified Person in which He represents us, and invokes intercession for us before the Throne of God on high, he shall be helped, he shall be forgiven, whatever his trouble or whatever his sin!
I. So, coming to the text, I shall, first of all, deal with the fact that EACH MAN HAS, OR WILL HAVE, SOME KIND OF GRIEF AND SORROW.
I may have some in this congregation, who can say, “We have no grief. We have no trouble.” Well, if that is the case, I am not sure that I can congratulate you, though I am very glad when all God’s children are happy in the Lord, and can joy and rejoice in His name. I pray that they may always do so, for I remember how Paul said, “Rejoice in the Lord always.” Surely that was enough, yet he added, “and again I say, Rejoice.” You cannot be too happy in the Lord! And whenever you meet others who are of a doubtful or troubled spirit, do not imitate them, though, I pray you, do not despise them! They may be, on the whole, in a better spiritual state than you are, although they are not better than you are as to their present difficulty. “The joy of the Lord is your strength,” and it is an excellent thing for a child of God to be happy and joyful in his Savior. Yet I should not wonder, dear Friend, that the day may come when you, whose eyes are brightest and whose steps are most elastic, will yet find that you shall have trouble in the flesh and, perhaps, trouble in the spirit, too, even as it was with those to whom the Apostle Peter wrote, “Though now for a season, if need be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations,” or trials. Not only do we have manifold trials, but we get into heaviness through them. It does happen to many of the best of God’s servants that they have their sorrow and grief. Just lately I have seen several persons who, I am persuaded, love the Lord and the Lord loves them—they are very precious to Him— humble, gentle, gracious people, but they have come into deep trouble, or some heavy cloud rests upon them. It is to them, especially, that I am now speaking.