1 Kings 8:38, 39 What prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all your people Israel… One of the most remarkable features of this scene of the dedication of the temple is the place occupied, the part performed, in it by Solomon himself. He is the central figure, the chief actor. Both priest and prophet give place to him. The dedicatory prayer is a spontaneous effusion of his own devout feeling, and it is he who pronounces afterwards the benediction on the people. He stands before us here as a true type of that greater "Son of David," who is our Prophet, Priest, and King. There is a great deal in the tone of this prayer that betokens a soul fully alive to the solemn and momentous meaning of what was taking place in Jerusalem that day. It is not, indeed, to the service of the ancient Jewish temple that we should look for the most perfect models of devotion. New Testament revelations multiply and strengthen immeasurably our motives to prayer, enlarge its scope, open to us new grounds of assurance in it. "One greater than Solomon" has taught us how to pray, and revealed to us the path to acceptance in the merit of His own mediation. But as the life of religion in the soul of man is essentially the same in all ages, so the principles involved in prayer as the expression of it are the same. Two such rudimentary principles appear in this passage, viz., the sense of need prompting the suppliant to look heavenwards, and the recognition of something out of himself as the ground of hope for acceptance. I. THE SENSE OF NEED, etc. It is the "plague of the heart" - the burden resting heavy there, the haunting sense of want or sadness in the secret soul, coupled with some kind of faith in Divine power - that moves men to pray. All true prayer is the utterance of these inward impressions. If much of our so called praying were subjected to this test, it is to be feared that it would be found very hollow and unreal, mere "words," a mere formal homage to custom - no deep, earnest, irrepressible longing of the soul inspiring it. Solomon begins to enumerate different calamities that may impel the people to pray, and then, as if overpowered by the mere vague, distant imagination of these possibilities, he says, "Whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness," etc. How soon are we lost in the attempt to realize the manifold troubles of human life. We can understand and sympathize with individual griefs, but who can comprehend at all adequately the general sum of human woe, and take the weight of it sympathetically upon himself? Every man, however, knows where the universal evil specially touches himself. "Every heart knows its own bitterness." And with God there is both an infinite acquaintance with the whole and a special sympathy with each. There are some griefs that you lock up in your own bosom as secrets that none else must look upon. "Not e'en the dearest heart, and next our own, Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh." But there is no grief you can conceal from Him. He became in the person of His Son "the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," that we might feel how He follows us, or rather, goes before us, in every path of suffering. There is room in the great fatherly heart of God for us all, with all our burdens, and we can never measure the uplifting and sustaining power that comes to us by casting ourselves and them upon it - "In everything by prayer and supplication," etc. (Philippians 4:6, 7); "Cast thy burden upon the Lord," etc. (Psalm 55:22). But this expression, "to plague of his own heart," has a deeper meaning. It opens to us all the dark sad mystery of personal sinfulness, the moral disease that lurks within. There are times when the most careless, reckless spirit has glimpses of the unwelcome truth that this, after all, is the deepest cause of its disquietude. The multiform, mysterious evil of the world has its central root in the world's heart. Something of that "root of all bitterness" is in every human heart. Here lies the fatal mischief. It is not the tribulations of outward life, it is yourself you have most reason to mourn over. Not so much from them, but from something in yourself you have need to pray to be delivered. Christ always taught, By word and deed, the vital connection between the external calamities and the internal "plague." He took upon Him our sicknesses and sorrows, not only to show us how they may be nobly borne, but that He might bring His power as the Great Physician of souls to Bear upon the seat of our deadly disease, and by the efficacy of His blood might heal and save us all. Go penitently in His name to the mercy seat with the "plague of your heart," and you shall be redeemed from it. II. THE RECOGNITION OF SOMETHING OUT OF ONE'S SELF AS THE GROUND OF HOPE. This essential element in true prayer is suggested by the words, "And shall stretch forth his hands towards this place." An interesting view is here given us of the relation of the temple to the individual religious life of the people. It was intended to be a witness to the unseen, a help to faith, an incentive to all holy thought and feeling. It stood through all the changes of time, the shifting lights and shadows of the world around it, as an impressive symbol of the "everlasting covenant." It enshrined the "sure mercies of David." Within its hallowed enclosure were gathered the sacred historic records and relies, and the types and shadows of "better things to come." It told both of what God had done and what He had promised - the monument of the glorious past, the prophecy of the brighter future. There was deep meaning, then, in the suppliant "stretching forth his hands towards that house," as expressive of the attitude of his soul towards that which it symbolized. When some lonely worshipper in a distant corner of the land, some patient sufferer, some soldier in his agony on the field of battle, some captive, like Daniel, in a strange country, directed his eyes towards the holy place, it was a sort of pathetic appeal to God's own faithfulness, a silent but eloquent plea that He would not forget His covenant, would fulfil the hopes that He Himself had awakened, and not for their sakes alone, but for His own truth and mercy's sake, would hear and save. In all this the temple was a type of something nobler, diviner than itself. The temple was the shadow, the substance is in Christ. "In him are hid all the treasures," etc. The cross of Christ, in which all the promises are confirmed and sealed; the cross, which is both the altar of the Redeemer's sacrifice and the throne of His sovereignty, is the shrine of "truth and grace" to men. The glory alike of the past and of the future is centred, focussed there. "All the light of sacred story Gathers round its head sublime," and from it there streams forth an ever-brightening radiance into the otherwise dark futurity. It stands the connecting link between heaven and earth, the meeting place of God and man, the key to all human history, the basis of our immortal hope. Here, then, on this central object alike of Divine and human interest, must the eye of the suppliant be fixed. It is that pledge of Divine love and faithfulness, external to ourselves, embodied in the cross of Christ, that we must plead if we would find acceptance in our prayer. When God has thoroughly taught us what the "plague of our own heart" means, and has unveiled to us the blessed mystery of His mode of curing it, it will be the sustained habit of our life to stand as suppliants before Him "in the name of Jesus." Thus alone can we so link ourselves with the sanctities of a higher world as to make our common life Divine. - W. Parallel Verses KJV: What prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart, and spread forth his hands toward this house: |
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