Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3097
“Help, LORD.” Psalm 12:1.
THIS was a prayer of David. It was offered under peculiar circumstances. He had been treacherously betrayed again and again. He delivered the city of Keilah from the Philistines and then had to flee from the place, or the men of Keilah would have delivered him up to his enemy, Saul. He went to the wilderness of Ziph and the men of Ziph at once ran to Saul to betray him. Doeg was present when David received some help from Ahimelech the priest and he set off straightway to inform the king. Everyone seemed to act treacherously with David while he was in his state of wandering. He therefore turned away altogether from men in whom he could put no confidence—and he cried, “Help, Lord.”
Let us spend a few minutes, first of all, in remarks upon the prayer itself. Then let us offer a few suggestions as to when it may be used. And we will close up with some encouragement to expect and answer.
I. First as to THE PRAYER ITSELF.
That which strikes you at once is its shortness—“Help, Lord.” Two words—and one of these is rather the direction of the prayer than the prayer itself. It is the very soul of brevity. “Help, Lord.” I may, however, say that it is none too short for all that for there is a fullness and suggestiveness in it which could not readily be exhausted. It is no fault in our prayers if they are short. And I think in our public petitions, especially at Prayer Meetings, it is a virtue to be aimed at to be brief. Mr. Jay says, with regard to his sermons, that he knew there were some excellences which would cost him much pains to attain, “But,” he said, “there was one I knew to be within my reach, namely, brevity, and therefore I made not the sermon too long.” Praying, indeed, being a more spiritual exercise than even preaching, must not be protracted. It is remarkable, if you remember, that Joshua’s arm never grew weary while he was fighting the Amalekites, but Moses’ hands grew weary while he was up on the mountain in prayer. Because prayer is a more spiritual exercise than fighting and, consequently, the spirit being our weaker part, we feel the weakness the sooner there. Let us not, then, pray our members into a good frame and then pray them out again—but when we have expressed our desires with that fewness of words which is proper in the Presence of God, let us close our supplications and let some other Brother take up the note. This is a short prayer.
Do you not see, dear Friends, that those of you who have been saying, “We do not pray because we have not time,” are guilty of a great falsehood? It cannot be lack of time. “Help, Lord.” Why, it takes scarcely a second to offer such a prayer as that! It is not lack of time—it is lack of heart and lack of inclination. People talk about praying as though they needed an hour to pray every morning and every night. I grant you it would be a very blessed thing if we could get the hour. I wish that, like the Puritans, we could always get an hour for devotion every morning and likewise at evening, but this is not absolutely necessary. You working men must not say, “We cannot pray because we have not time.” Why, in your work, in the midst of your goings to and fro, if God has given you the heart of prayer, you will be lifting up your soul to God! I think it is a good thing to have some small change of prayer about you. I compare this prayer to our small change. It has been said of some great men that they could not talk in company—when they got upon their feet and had a prepared discourse, they could speak very much to edification, but in general society they could not edify anyone. Someone said they had gold, but it was all in bullion—it was not minted—they could not put it into a shape so that it might be current in society. Well now, we must have the bullion of prayer, so as to be able to wrestle with God by the hour together if necessary, but to have the minted small change of brief or exclamatory prayer, to send a thought up to
Heaven—the glance of an eye, a tear-bedewed word to let drop before the Throne—that, also, is well! I invite you to adopt the prayer, brief as it is, and use it tonight, tomorrow, all your days—“Help, Lord.”
Besides being very short, it was very seasonable. It is well to have seasonable prayer, for those prayers speed best that spring out of an emergency which, as with a fair wind, drives the soul to the Throne of God. The worst of those forms of prayer which are of merely human composition, I think, is that they are very much like those ready-made clothes which we see for sale—they are intended to fit everybody, and yet rarely do they fit anybody. Forms of prayer must, from the necessity of the case, be unseasonable. That is the best prayer which draws its adaptation from my present circumstances, its intensity from my present feelings and its aspiration from my present faith. It makes me cry in just such language and plead just such promises that I could not plead any other—I could not wish for any other, I could not ask in any other style than I now do. That is a seasonable prayer. David, you see, had been betrayed and deceived. He had met with flattering lips and deceitful hearts. He found all men in his day gone aside from honesty and so he turned right away from those broken cisterns that were leaking at every point, to cry to the great Fountain that he might have a draught from the cooling stream! “‘Help, Lord!’ Men will not help me. I am reduced to an extreme so far as the creature is concerned. Now is Your turn, O You gracious One! Put out Your mighty arm, now that man’s puny arm is broken. ‘Help, Lord!’ Help, I pray You!”