Opening the Mouth

DELIVERED BY

C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it." Psalm 81:10.

SOME have considered that our text contains an allusion to a singular
custom of showing favor which has been occasionally adopted by Eastern
monarchs. It is not a very long time ago that a former Shah of Persia
bade an ambassador, who was in great favor with him, open his mouth,
and when he had done so the monarch filled it with pearls and gems of
great value which, of course, were a present to him. This certainly
affords an illustration of the text, even if the passage contains no
allusion to it. If we will but open the mouth of our desire, God will
give to us mercies infinitely more precious than the rarest gems.

I guarantee you that if any emperor or king should bid us open our
mouths that we might have them filled with diamonds, we should be very
sure to extend them to their largest possible capacity and, therefore,
this custom may serve as a good enforcement of the text. Open your
mouth wide, for God will not fill it with secondary things, but will
satisfy you with Divine mercies of exceeding preciousness. I think,
however, that the illustration which we have mentioned is far fetched
and I seldom like an explanation of a passage of Scripture which
demands the introduction of a very rare incident. Illustrations are
used in Scripture not to perplex us, but to render the teaching more
clear.

We will, therefore, look to some more common act of Eastern life for
the explanatory allusion. Those who have been at the tables of the
Orientals know that there is another very common custom which meets the
case. The host, when you are at supper, will take the fattest portions
of the lamb, if that happens to be the meat, and he will apportion them
to you. He may even take up the fattest and choicest morsels in his
hand and, asking you to open your mouth, he will place them in it. This
is a common practice of the country and lies at the bottom of many a
Scriptural expression. "Who satisfies your mouth with good things, so
that your youth is renewed like the eagles." "My soul shall be
satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise You
with joyful lips," and a great many other texts which I might quote,
all allude to that custom.

A man greatly beloved would be asked to open his mouth wide that he
might receive a very large portion of the dainties before him. I
confess, however, that I am not much enamored with even this simile. I
believe it to be a valuable side light, but I had rather, after all,
look to Nature for an illustration than dwell upon a custom which is
purely Oriental and is hardly relished by our Western delicacy. Come
with me, then, to the woods, where the songsters of the grove have
built their habitations. Look at the little birds in the nest, for
there you have the text! They are newly hatched and unable to feed
themselves and, therefore, they are wholly dependent upon the parent
birds.

When I have peered into their abode, they seemed, to me, to be all
mouth and beak, with but faint trace of wings! If you put out your
finger, or dangle a worm near them, no feature strikes you but those
gaping ravenous mouths! When the mother bird brings food she never has
to ask the little ones to open their mouths wide–her only difficulty
is to fill the great width which they are quite sure to present to her!
Appetite and eagerness are never lacking, they are utterly insatiable.
If you need my text before your eyes in living realization, only
picture a nest of little birds reaching up their mouths and all opening
them as wide as they can.

Instead of the poor little mother bird that has been hard at work to
gather a scanty portion for one of them, you have an infinite God
filling all open mouths and bidding them open again, for He is able to
fill them, however many they may be, or however vast their needs! It is
that great Lord of ours of whom it is written, "He shall cover you with
His feathers and under His wings shall you trust," who now speaks to
us, as little birds, and says, "Open your mouths wide, for I will fill
them." That is, at any rate, a pleasing illustration of the test, even
if it is not the exact idea which was in the Psalmist's mind. The text
divides itself into the exhortation and the promise.

I. The exhortation is, "OPEN YOUR MOUTH WIDE." How are we to do this?
The precept relates to prayer and desire and the like. But there is
also an exhortation to labor after a great sense of need. For what
makes a bird open its mouth wide but its hunger? The young ravens cry
because they need food and nobody will ever open his mouth wide for
spiritual blessings until he has a very deep and solemn sense of his
need before God. You sinners will never pray till you know you need
something–why should you? All the prayers offered by people who have
no needs are so much vain complimenting of God. If you have no sense of
need how can you pray?

Would you knock at the door of charity and then tell the good man of
the house that you require nothing of him? Is not that man an arrant
trifler who rings the surgery bell but tells the surgeon that he has
nothing the matter with him and does not need his care? Prayers that
are not based upon a sense of need are mockeries. And I say this to
Christians, too. You never pray, Brothers and Sisters, except when you
are in need–and rest assured when you think you have no more needs you
have lost the strongest motive for prayer and the main element of power
in it. You may feel, at times, that there is little to request on your
own account and you may rejoice that the Lord has filled you to the
full for the time being, but then there are the needs of the Church and
of the world–and these should press upon your heart as if they were
your own.

You cannot pray without a sense of need, it is out of the question. The
man who comes to you begging because he has not a night's lodging, or
has not broken his fast all day, how well he begs! You do not need to
send him to school to learn the art of begging–his hungry belly makes
him eloquent! And so, when a man feels he must have heavenly blessings
or be lost. Or when he feels that, being saved, he must still be kept
by daily Grace, or else he will start aside. Or when he feels that his
work of faith and labor of love will be good for nothing without the
Divine blessing. Or when he feels that the Church must have the
anointing of the Holy One and that the world needs a visitation from
God–when any of these needs solemnly weigh upon his soul–then it is
that he prays! The man does not open his mouth wide till he is
conscious of a great need, which only the Lord, Himself, can supply.

I exhort you, therefore, dear Brethren, to shake off the idea of being
rich and increased in goods, and having need of nothing, for this proud
notion will strangle prayer! You are weakness itself and emptiness
itself–and a mass of sin and misery–apart from God your Father, and
Christ your Redeemer, and the Spirit the Indweller! And when you know
this, then you will open your mouth wide. Airy notions about having
reached a higher life and being perfect will make fine gentlemen of
you, but will spoil you for being beggars at the Mercy Seat. The mouth
of dire necessity, God always fills, but pride has short results, for
is it not one of the proverbs of His kingdom, "He has filled the hungry
with good things; but the rich He has sent empty away"?

Then, dear Friends, next seek after an intense and vehement desire, for
the mouth is opened wide only when the desire becomes intense. You know
how David says, "I opened my mouth and panted." You have seen a dog
after a long run, how he stands with opened mouth panting for life and
breath. Oh, that we had desires after God and Divine things strong
enough to make us thus open our mouth and pant! We may never have seen
a stag in extremis, but I dare say David had. He had seen it in the
fierce hunt when it longed to have its smoking sides in the water
brooks and to drink long draughts, and he said, "As the hart pants
after the water brooks, so pants my soul after You, O God."

Nothing puts such energy into prayer as intense anguish of desire.
Desire comes out of a sense of need and in proportion as the necessity
is overwhelming, the fervency of the desire will be vehement. My
Brothers and Sisters, we have not, because, although we ask, we use a
kind of asking which is as though we asked not! An old Puritan says,
"He that prays to God without fervor asks to be denied." There is a way
of asking for a thing in which the person to whom the request is made
finds it very easy to decline the request. But persons in dire need
understand how to put their case so that only a very hard-hearted
person could say, "no." They know how to place their petition in such a
way that the request wins, not merely because of the rightness of the
petition, but also because of the very style in which it is put.

We must learn how to pray with strong cries and tears, for there are
mercies which cannot be gained by any other mode of supplicating. Did
you ever try your little child by holding fast in your hand something
that he wanted? You wished to see whether he had perseverance enough to
pull open your fingers, one by one, to get what he wished for. And you
have shut your hand very tightly and tried his endeavors so long that
at last you have seen the big round tears stand in his eyes–and then
you have held out no longer. The tears open your hand!

I believe that our heavenly Father exercises us in that manner at times
until He gets us right down to this–that we must have it and we shall
die if we do not have it because it is for His Glory–and we have His
promise for it. When we come to that point we are where the Lord meant
us to be! And having brought us there, He gives us our desire, having
already doubled the blessing by stirring us up to vehemence. Open your
mouth wide, Man! Do not play at praying! Nobody is saved between
sleeping and waking–and nobody wins rich blessings by being lukewarm.
I have heard mothers say of a child that, "he cried all over," and that
is the right way to pray! Let your whole man wrestle with the Most
High. "Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it."

Deep necessity and urgent desire are two great openers of the mouth in
prayer. To my mind the pith of the text may be compressed into such
words as these–Ask for large things. Do not restrict your requests and
pray with bated breath, but plead with the great God for great things,
such as it will be to His Glory to bestow. In this point we too often
fail. I remember praying before I preached in a certain provincial town
and asking the Lord that He would enable at least one poor soul to lay
hold on Christ.

I went home to tea with a very worthy Brother, and a fine old Christian
gentleman at the tea table said to me very kindly, "I do not know what
you did with your faith this afternoon when you were praying, for you
asked the Lord to give you one soul, but the sermon was such that I saw
no reason why it should not be blessed to a thousand. I could not say,
'Amen,' to such a very narrow prayer as that. Why," said he, "Man
alive! With such a Gospel as you were preaching, and such a crowd of
people, you might as well have asked for a thousand souls as one." I
thought so, too, and confessed the poverty of my prayer.

Brethren, many of us have made great mistakes and have shut ourselves
up in the cells of poverty when our feet might have stood in a large
room! We have laid down pipes too small to bring us a full current of
blessing. We have half-killed our prayers by lacing them too tight,
even as foolish mothers kill their daughters. Our cup is small and we
blame the fountain! The Israelites, according to this Psalm, did not
believe in God as they should. They did not expect their enemies to be
driven out, nor hope to be fed with the finest of the wheat. They
thought their God was a commonplace God, like the gods of Egypt. They
did not know what a rich, generous, great-hearted, large-giving God He
is and so they failed in asking and, therefore, they did not obtain the
richest blessings of Grace. Christians should elevate the scale of
their praying and enlarge their requests and never let it be said that
they lose blessings solely by failing to ask for them.

Dear Brothers and Sisters, we may well ask great things, for we are
asking of a great God who fills immensity, who has all power, who has
all blessings in His stores! If we were to ask Him for a world, it is
no more for Him to bestow a world than it would be for us to give away
a crumb! When the poor widow gave her two mites she gave her all and
knowing her poverty, one would ask very little of her and expect even
less! But when you ask of a king you do not expect two mites from him!
That poor woman who said, "Truth, Lord, but the dogs eat of the crumbs
that fall from the Master's table," was far nearer the mark than most
of us, for much as she valued the inestimable blessing which she
sought, she reckoned it as being nothing more than a crumb as it came
from God!

The greatest blessings which can yet be received through Jesus Christ,
though we cannot prize them enough and they are beyond all calculation,
precious, are little in comparison with the unspeakable gift of His
Son, which has already been bestowed! Open your mouth wide, for wide
are the supplies of love, and boundless the riches of the Sovereign
Grace of so great a God! Besides His greatness, remember His goodness.
The good Lord delights to give–it does not diminish His possessions,
but affords Him satisfaction. The sun is just as bright,
notwithstanding all his shining, as if he had stored up his light. It
is the sun's nature to shine and it may as well shine upon us as
anywhere else! And it is God's delight to distribute His goodness and
bless His creatures–and therefore we may well ask large things from
One whose very nature it is to scatter His fullness among the poor and
needy.

Remember, dear Brothers and Sisters, what He has already done for us.
"I am the Lord your God, which brought you up out of Egypt," says He,
"Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it." See what He has done! Is it
a trifle to have had all your sins forgiven, to have received a new
heart and a right spirit, to have been saved by the precious blood of
His dear Son? If we made our prayers to scale, if they were
proportioned to the measure of God's past favors, what great prayers
they would be! I love a Gospel on a grand scale. I cannot bear to see
anything about it lowered, or cut down– not even the terrors of it. I
am certain that those who make out the punishment of the wicked to be
upon a smaller scale,

must, before long, diminish the Glory of the Atonement and bring down
their conceptions of God, Himself, for they are all proportioned.

But you and I, who see everything to be grand, vast, infinite, ought to
open our mouths wide, to keep our praying somewhat proportionate to the
condition of things around us. Remember, beloved Brothers and Sisters,
what great pleas you have to urge when you come before God. Your main
argument is the gift of His dear Son. Now, if you pray according to
that plea, you will have this consideration to support you–"He that
spared not His own Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all, how
shall He not, with Him, also freely give us all things"? What a word is
that–"all things"! Your prayers cannot outrun those comprehensive
words–"all things." Should you not open your mouth wide? Would you
employ before God the magnificent plea of the atoning blood and then
come down to ask for pence and halfpence, when you might as well have
countless riches?

Will you ask for enough Grace to keep you out of Hell, when you might
have Grace enough to make you habitually in the suburbs of Heaven? Will
you ask to be useful to two or three, when you might, with the same
plea, prevail to be a spiritual benefactor to hundreds and thousands?
He deserves to be poor who has no desire to be rich and will not even
take the trouble to ask for wealth. He who will not so much as open his
mouth must expect no pity should he starve. Oh, Beloved, do not pinch
yourselves, but ask the largest conceivable blessings! Spread your most
capacious net, for the multitude of fish will fill it! Dig the deepest
pools, for the rain will brim them! Bring forth all your empty vessels,
for the oil shall be multiplied till all are overflowing.

Beloved, let us ask great things for ourselves. I do not mean let us
ask great temporal blessings–we may leave everything of that kind with
God and this is the limit He puts to such prayer–"Give us day by day
our daily bread." Having food and raiment let us be content. But as for
spiritual things, ask what you will and it shall be done unto you. Here
the treasury has neither lock nor key! The lid is taken off from the
jewelry box–help yourself–and if you are straitened you are not
straitened in God, you are straitened in your own heart! I beseech you,
young Christians, do not be satisfied with getting as much Grace as the
people you live with, who profess to be Christians, for there are hosts
of them that I would not like to risk my soul with.

I am not their judge, but I think, I think it will be an extraordinary
thing if they get into Heaven. I know some very loud-mouthed talkers
whose actions are not pretty at all, and the less said about them the
better. I mean some professors when I speak thus. I mean members of
Churches. Now, do not you young people make them your standard–get far
beyond them! Outstrip the ordinary run of Christians who are consistent
and no more. I would urge you to seek far higher things than they
possess. They are said to be "consistent," though I do not know what
they are consistent with. They do nothing that is grossly wrong and
they are good, ordinary, respectable people, but as to joy in the Lord
and being filled with the Holy Spirit, and real faith–daring faith,
love and zeal for God's Glory–and agony for the conversion of souls,
why, large numbers of very consistent people know nothing about these
things except when they read about them in the Bible!

Surely their condition is more consistent with membership in Laodicea
than in the New Jerusalem! Their consistency is not consistency with
the Divine will, but a miserable consistency with their own
dead-and-alive profession. Oh, you that are beginners in the Divine
Life, I pray you be not as your fathers! Do not take any of us for a
standard. We are a good-for-nothing generation, taking us all round,
and there had need be a far better race springing up that shall really
believe and act upon their faith! We need a generation who will so live
unto God with a more intense, strong and mighty life than most of us
have ever realized. Open your mouth wide, young Christian, for a large
measure of the Holy Spirit and for a mighty fullness of the life of
God, that it may be in you a well of water springing up unto
everlasting life.

Open your mouths wide, dear Friends, and ask great things for the
Church. The Church of God, I hope, is in a better condition than she
was some years ago, but we have not yet learned what it is to believe
in great works being done for God. There are still Churches, which if
they were to have half-a-dozen added to them in a year, would be
intensely satisfied, if not overjoyed, instead of calling for prayer
and fasting and humiliation because so few are brought to Christ. There
are Church members around us who do not believe in many people being
converted at once. If the Gospel were preached so that a dozen were
brought in at one time, they would impute it to undue excitement and
doubt its being the work of the Spirit of God, though we have the New
Testament and the Acts of the Apostles, especially, to lead us to
expect such things.

There are Churches to which, if God were to send a hundred converts at
once, they would not receive them, but would put them through a rigid
quarantine! And you may be sure our heavenly Father will not send His
new-born babes to places where they will not be cheerfully admitted!
There are certain Churches whose modes of testing and trying are such
that the young lambs would be torn to bits before they would get into
the green pastures–and there would hardly be two legs and a piece of
an ear left after they had passed the examination–the Good Shepherd
will not send His lambs where such a tribe of wolves stand gaping for
prey. Pray for the Church, that she may have greater faith in her God,
greater belief in the Gospel which she preaches, greater closeness of
walk with Jesus, greater care to obey her Master's precepts–and then
you may open your mouth wide and expect to see the kingdom of Christ
more fully come.

Open your mouth for this great city. Who can think what a city we live
in without desiring to be mighty in prayer for it? At this moment
Scotland is a land where religion has mighty influence and I trace it
mainly to the prayers of John Knox. His mighty pleading with God
anchored Scotland to the Gospel and she cannot get away from it. We
have urgent need to pray for England in these evil times. Many are
preying upon her, we have need to pray for her. The darkness
thick-ens–among the learned it has blackened into Egyptian night and
among the illiterate it is as the valley of the shadow of death.
Skepticism is descending upon us like a horrible mist, chilling faith
even to the very marrow of our bones. Superstition, like a feverish
fog, pollutes the air. We have need to cry to the Lord to do some great
work in these days–to smite His enemies upon the cheekbone–and to
send forth His power among His friends.

I think I have explained sufficiently that the text means ask great
things. But one more remark I must cover, and that is that many of us
have need to ask for enlarged capacities. It would be of no use to open
your mouth if you could not swallow what was put into it, or if you
could not digest it after you had swallowed it. And there are many
precious Truths of the Gospel which uninstructed Believers could not
digest if they knew them. Therefore there is great need that their
minds should be strengthened and fitted to feed upon strong meat. The
grand Truths of the Covenant. The Doctrines of Election and
Predestination.

The glorious facts of the Immutable Love of God and the indissoluble
union of the saints with Christ, and their consequent everlasting
safety–all these are sublime matters which cannot be appreciated by
every novice, but require a spiritually educated mind to enjoy them.
Thousands of professors sneer at these eternal Truths because they have
not the spiritual digestion which could assimilate such grand
soul-feeding meat! They remind me of little, conceited boys affecting
to despise the diet of men because they, themselves, have no taste
except for sugar plums and sponge cakes. There are many mercies which
persons ask for and if God were to bestow them, they would not know
what to do with them! It would be like giving them a white
elephant–they would not know where or how to keep it.

Yonder Brother asks for more talent and yet he does not use what he
already has! Another Brother begs the Lord to make him successful in
his work, but he would be top heavy and proud, and exalted above
measure if he were favored with a little success. One man craves that
he may know, but his knowledge would puff him up. Another prays that he
may feel, but his feelings would drown his faith! If we had more room
for the Lord's gifts, we should receive more. I have half a mind to
exhort you to imitate the rich fool and pull down your barns and build
greater. He was a fool because he meant to gather a store of wheat and
grain of the earth–but if you can build greater barns to hold the
precious Grace which comes from Heaven, you will be wise, indeed.

God will not give you what you cannot receive or put to healthy use.
But, Oh, pray to Him, "Lord, enlarge my heart, expand my soul and give
me a nobler mind free from selfishness, less cramped with ideas of my
own consequence! Make me less important, more loving, more careful for
the souls of others, more ambitious for Your Glory, more intensely
consecrated to Your Word and will." While self hoards up its treasures
there is no room for Divine things! And the surest way for our
enlargement is to turn out the vile stuff. Tobiah's furniture is in the
chamber of the house of the Lord and out it must go! Then there will be
room for the treasure which the Master bestows.

II. The second head is the promise. "Open your mouth wide, AND I WILL
FILL IT." You might expect such a promise as that. You could not think
it possible for the Lord to say, "Open your mouths for nothing." It
would not be according to His usual way of procedure. He does not set
His servants praying and then say somewhere behind their backs, "they
shall seek My face in vain." Tantalus belongs to the heathen mythology,
not to the Christian's experience. "Open your mouth wide, and I will
fill it."

I gather from this promise, first, that it is a promise only made to
those who open their mouths wide. Some Brethren never get their mouths
filled because they never open them to any extent. They ask for some
little mercy and they may get it, or may not. There is no promise about
such shut-mouthed prayers–if they had opened their mouths wide they
would have, for sure, had the mouth-filling blessing. With the world,
it is the less you ask for, the more likely you will be to obtain it,
but God's thoughts are not as our thoughts. With God, the more you ask,
the more likely are you to be heard. Half open your mouth and it may or
may not be filled, but, "Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it."

We always pray well and successfully when the Spirit of God enables us
to stand on elevated ground and plead on godlike terms for blessings
which for value, number and greatness are worthy of the infinite bounty
of Jehovah. We are then dealing with God as He loves to be dealt with,
for He is a rich and great God, and loves to be approached with great
prayers and great requests. And when we draw near in that fashion we
shall be quite sure to succeed. I would encourage you, dear Brothers
and Sisters, who seem to have failed in your supplications, to enquire
whether they may not have failed because their requests were too
little.

God seems to say to His servant, "You have not asked enough. Come, Man,
you are trifling with Me! Here is My Mercy Seat–I am rich, infinitely
rich, and willing to give you according to your desires–and you are
asking me for mere odds and ends. Do not play with Me in this way! Ask
for something which I can feel a pleasure in giving to you– something
worthy of a God." "Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it." Should
not this thought greatly strengthen us when next we draw near to God in
prayer?

Remember, too, that this is a promise given by One who can fulfill it
and will. "Open your month wide, and I will fill it" is a sort of
challenge. "See whether you can ask for more than I can give you." Try
whether your faith can outrun your God! See whether you can expect more
of God than He will bestow. Take His promise and challenge Him, and see
whether He will run back from it. He promises great things and
unsearchable, let your soul's necessities impel you to ask for the
greatest conceivable blessings and see whether He will deny you. "Prove
Me, now, says the Lord of Hosts, and

see."

Oh, if Israel had been in an experimenting mind, what wonders would
they have seen! How would the windows of Heaven have been flung back
and Infinite Good been showered down! But they were not in a praying
mood. God encouraged them to ask by the favor with which He had
surrounded them, for of old He had scattered manna about their
habitations, and from the Rock He had drawn forth flowing streams. Thus
He seemed to say to them, "Oh, Israel, see how you are surrounded with
miracles! Heaven and earth are made subservient to you. Nothing is too
hard for Me–I open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst
of the deserts–believe in Me and act according to the scale upon which
I am acting to you–and see whether I shall fail in anything." Even so
the Lord puts it to you, dear Brethren, and it is not an empty boast.
He is not a man that He should lie, or the son of man that He should
repent. Has He said, and shall He not do it? "Open your mouth wide, and
I will fill it."

Oh, what stories I could tell, here, of my own experience if it did not
seem like egotism. When I read, as I continually do, slurs put upon our
prayer-hearing, prayer-answering God, and find that it has become a
current opinion that there really is no such a thing as an answer to
prayer, I feel indignant! Why, Sirs, I am as sure that God hears my
prayers as I am certain that you hear me! To me the energy of prayer is
as self-evident as the weight of a substance, or the force of a motive
power. The law of gravitation I might doubt, but the law that God hears
prayer I cannot! The wonder to me is that men should stand up and
assert that God does not hear prayer when they cannot be supposed to
know everything and dare not claim to have any very special
acquaintance with prayer, itself, such as to qualify them to calculate
its results.

Those who deny the efficacy of prayer never pray! No, are not capable
of offering prevalent prayer. Why do they speak so positively? What do
they know about it? How dare they, as philosophers, speak dogmatically
of that which they have never tried? I can say, and I do say it
honestly, that hundreds of times, about all sorts of things, I have
taken my case to God and have obtained the desire of my heart, or
something far better–and that not by mere coincidence, as these
objectors assert–but in a manner palpably in reply to my pleadings.
There are multitudes of Brothers and Sisters here, who, from their own
experience, can bear the same witness!

Yet a fellow gets up who never tried prayer and says it is of no avail!
We find it hard to have patience with him. How does he know? He reminds
me of the Irish prisoner who was brought up for murder and half-a-dozen
people swore that

they had seen him do the deed. "Your Lordship," he said, "I could bring
ten times as many that didn't see me do it." Yes, but that was no
evidence at all! And in the same way, these people have the impudence
to set up their theory on no better grounds than the fact that they do
not pray and God does not hear them! What is the good of such evidence?
We know He would not hear them if they did not pray. When He does hear
simple men and women, guiltless persons who, if they were put on the
witness stand, would be reckoned to be the best witnesses a court could
have–is their witness to go for nothing?

And others of us, whose character, I trust, would bear us through any
cross-examination–are we to assert that God has answered our prayers
and be prepared to die to prove our sincerity, if need be–and yet be
told that men who have not tried it, and say it is not so, are
philosophers and are to be believed sooner than we are? We may not be
philosophers, but we are honest men and have done nothing to make our
testimony unreliable. It is easy to call us fools, but hard names prove
nothing but the weakness of those who use them. Take Christians as a
rule and they are not less sharp-witted than skeptics. Indeed, even
when they have been fanatical, they have seldom said or done such
unwise things as skeptical philosophers have propounded and attempted
to carry out. However, it little matters what the ungodly say, the
foundation of God stands sure.

Oh, Brethren, we will prove the power of prayer more than ever! If we
have asked and had, we will ask more and we shall have more. If we have
opened our mouths and God has filled them, we will open our mouths
wider and obtain a larger blessing. The very best way to put to rout
the falsehood of these philosophic atheists is more real prayer–fools
are unanswerable. Christian Brethren, look at the promise again. "Open
your mouth wide, and I will fill it," and then answer the question–how
will the Lord fill our mouth? First, He will fill it with prayers. Do
you ever feel as if you could not pray? Do not yield to the feeling,
for then is the time to pray! When you cannot pray you must pray. Hold
your empty mouth open before God, for the Holy Spirit to put the prayer
into it.

I have come away from attempting to pray and felt I did not pray. And
the next time I have knelt down I have been very fluent in prayer and
yet there was more real prayer in my groaning and sighing and heaving
heart when I thought I failed, than there was in the fluency of the
second occasion! Open your mouth wide, dear Brothers and Sisters, and
God will fill it with petitions of an acceptable kind. The Holy Spirit
will give you "groans that cannot be uttered." No prayer excels that in
which the creature feels as if it could not pray and did not pray–and
yet the Creator, Himself, strives mightily within!

Then, open your mouth wide and He will fill it with the actual
blessings. He will not merely put blessings into your hands, but He
will fill your mouth with them. It is one thing to have the cup of
blessing in your hand and quite another thing to drink thereof. Many a
man possesses what he never enjoys–the fruit on the tree is his own,
but its sweet flavor never gladdens his mouth. When the Lord, in love,
bestows a blessing, He teaches us how to enjoy it! He gives us the
essence of the meat, the soul of the solace, the juice of the vine, the
heart of the joy–not merely the legal claim to it but the actual
enjoyment of it! This is the cream of the cream, the mercy of the
mercy, the filling of the mouth with the promised good.

The Lord will also fill our mouth with praises. Open your mouth wide
and God will fill it with songs, with shouts, with gratitude which
cannot be expressed in words. Some of us know what it means to have our
mouths so full of God's praises all day long that we have wanted all
mankind and all the angels to help us magnify the Lord. Open your
mouths wide, then, and God will fill them with prayer, with blessing,
and with praise.

In conclusion, is there not very much of rebuke in this to most of us?
Parents, have you prayed for the salvation of your children–vehemently
and earnestly? All your children? Teachers in the classes, have you
expected the conversion of all your children and prayed for it?
Preachers of the Gospel, have you looked for many conversions and
prayed for them? Brethren who labor for Christ in any capacity, have
you expected to see London converted to God and looked for it and
worked for it? In Gospel fisheries we generally catch what we fish for.
If we fish with a fly we may get one fish, but if we know how to use
the great dragnet, by mighty faith we shall take 153 great fishes! And
for all that, the net will not be broken! Open your mouth wide,
Brothers and Sisters, and be rebuked to think you have not opened it
wide before.

But is there not also a word here of consolation to the sinner? "Open
your mouth wide," says God, even to you, "and I will fill it." What do
you need, Sinner? "Well, I want a little comfort." Do not ask for that,
Brother. Ask for the Lord Jesus Christ at once. "Open your mouth wide."
"Oh, I want a little peace. I am so troubled." Do not ask for that,

Brother. Ask for a whole Christ and a perfect salvation now. "I want to
feel some measure of impression under this sermon." Do not pray for
that, Sister. Ask God for a new heart and a right spirit outright, and
now! "Open your mouth wide." "Will I have it if I asked for it?" It is
written, "He that asks receives; he that seeks finds; and to him that
knocks it shall be opened."

If you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you shall have this
unspeakably great blessing of being immediately saved, for, "He that
believes on the Son of God has everlasting life." "Open your mouth
wide." "But I am such a sinner." Open your mouth, Man! The promise
makes no limit as to who you are. "But I am–I am–." There, I mind not
what you are. Open your mouth, Man! Open your mouth wide! If we were to
gather together in one place all the little waifs and strays of London
streets, and were to say to them, "Children, we are going to give you a
good dinner, and all you have to do is open your mouths," I do not
suppose one little hungry wretch would shut his mouth, or turn away
muttering, "I am not fit." Oh dear, no! You can be quite sure that they
would open their mouths if all were hungry, and would need no pressing
either!

And so will you, too, if the Spirit of God has made you hunger and
thirst after righteousness. Open your mouth wide, believing that Jesus
is the Christ! Trust your soul with Him and ask, now, for immediate
pardon through His precious blood, and you will not be denied. May the
Holy Spirit make you hungry and then your longing mouth shall be
filled–and God shall have all the glory. May His blessing rest upon
you for Christ's sake.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON–Psalm 81. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
HYMN BOOK"–978, 986, 980.