The Blessings of Public Worship

The Blessings of Public Worship

(No. 2395)

INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, JANUARY 13, 1895.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
FEBRUARY 3, 1887.

"Two men went up into the Temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the
other a publican." Luke 18:10.

THIS is called a parable, yet it is rather an incident, an anecdote, a
statement of facts. You will observe that our Lord never used a fable.
Fables may be employed to set forth that which is earth-born, but a
parable, which is, in itself, true, is alone adapted to set forth
spiritual Truths of God. I say this just now because I read, the other
day, an assertion that the story of the rich man and Lazarus was only a
fable, like that of Jotham. But the most of our Lord's parables are not
only parables, but literal facts–and all of them might be facts. I
would almost go the length of saying that all of them have been actual
facts and in this case there is nothing parabolic at all. It is the
statement of an incident which did literally occur, for truth is best
illustrated by truth and, as Christ had nothing to teach but what was
pure Truth, He illustrated it by Truth and never went into the realm of
fiction, or invented a tale, or told a story which was not a fact, much
less did He ever teach by a mere fable!

There were two men who went into the Temple to pray. They prayed in
just the way that our Lord describes and they went away, the one
justified, and the other without a blessing. I am not going into the
full teaching of the parable on this occasion, but I want to make a few
observations concerning public worship in the Lord's House. Commencing
to preach, again, on Thursday nights, after my season of rest, I
thought that this sermon should be a sort of preface or introduction to
our gatherings for prayer, praise, preaching and hearing the Word. God
grant us a blessing in beginning, again, this holy employment. And may
we be in health and strength and spiritual vigor, and be of some use to
the people of God!

I. Commencing, then, I would say, first, that IT IS WELL TO WORSHIP GOD
IN PUBLIC–"Two men went up into the Temple to pray."

It is good to pray anywhere. He that does not pray in his closet is but
a hypocrite when he pretends to pray in the Temple. But, though we pray
in the closet–though we get into such a habit of prayer and are so
full of the spirit of prayer that we can pray anywhere–it is well to
go and mingle with others and openly worship God who delights to be
thus worshipped. It was written very early in the history of our race,
"Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord." It has been the
custom of the godly to meet for worship in all times. The sheep of
Christ are gregarious–this is their nature, they love to gather
themselves into congregations, to feed in the same pasture–and to
enjoy, together, the Presence of their great Shepherd. It will always
be so. The more pious and godly men are, alone, the more will they love
associated worship. If it should ever happily come to pass that each
feeble one among us should be as David, and every David should be as
the angel of the Lord, yet even then we would find strength and help in
our service for God by meeting together for united worship. The
Apostolic command is, "Let us consider one another to provoke unto love
and to good works: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together,
as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the
more, as you see the day approaching." Public worship is not
everything–if there were no private worship, it would be nothing by
itself. To go up to the Temple is not everything. The man who does not
meet God outside the Temple will not meet God inside the Temple, he may
rest assured of that.

Yet, it is well, it is desirable that it should be said of us as it was
said of the men mentioned in our text, "Two men went up into the Temple
to pray." For public worship is, first of all, an open avowal of our
faith in God and of our belief in prayer. If we pray in private, nobody
knows it. At least nobody should know it, for our Lord's direction is
very plain,

"You, when you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut
your door, pray to your Father which is in secret; and your Father
which sees in secret shall reward you openly." Our acts of personal
devotion must be sacred to God and our own souls, but when we go up to
the public assembly–whether it is but of two or three, or of many
thousands, it matters not–there is, to that extent, an open
declaration that we believe in God, that, let others do as they may, as
for us, we worship Him, we believe in the reality and power and
usefulness of prayer and, therefore, in the light of day, before all
men, we gather ourselves together to pray! I thank God that there are,
in this unbelieving London, so many thousands of assemblies of
worshipping people–a public testimony constantly borne to the fact
that we do believe in God and that we do believe in prayer!

Public worship is also, in the next place, a good way of securing unity
in prayer. A number of persons may agree to pray about one thing, yet
they may never see each other's faces–their prayers may blend at the
Mercy Seat, but they must lack an emphatic consciousness of unity such
as we have who come together to pray. Our Lord Jesus promised His
special Presence to the united gatherings of His people when He said.
"Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the
midst of them." Oh, dear Friends, what should we do if we were not able
to come together to mingle our sighs and cries and tears and, better
still, to blend our joys, our Psalms, our shouts of victory? As we are
members of one mystical body, it is but right that we should, as
members of that one body, worship together, lifting up the joyous song
in tuneful harmony and blending our supplications!–

"Around our common Mercy Seat." I think, also, that public worship is a
great means of quickening. At any rate, it is so to me. I never feel
that I can pray as well as when I am in the midst of my own dear
friends and, oftentimes, when things are flagging within the soul, to
get together with brighter spirits, in whom the life of God is more
vigorous, is a great help to me. It does not seem so very long
ago–although these spectacles and my many gray hairs tell me that it
must have been long since– that I used to say to my mother that hymn
which begins–

"Lord, how delightful 'tis to see

A whole assembly worship Thee!

At once they sing, at once they pray;

They hear of Heaven, and learn the Way." Dr. Watts put it very well and
I can utter the same sentiment–

"Lord how delightful 'tis to see

This vast assembly worship Thee!" when the house is full from floor to
ceiling–

"At once they sing, at once they pray; They hear of Heaven, and learn
the Way." Those two men, of whom our Savior spoke, did well to go up to
the Temple to pray! And we shall do well not to cease from the habit of
assembling ourselves together for public worship in the Lord's House.

Then, dear Friends, public worship is a part of the great system by
which God blesses the world. It has much to do with the gathering, the
sustenance, the strengthening, the invigorating and the extension of
the Church of Christ. And it is through the Church of Christ that God
accomplishes His purposes in the world. Oh, the blessings that come to
us in our public assemblies! Are there not, sometimes, days of Heaven
upon earth? Have we not felt our hearts burning within us when we have
been listening to the Word of God, or joining in praise or prayer?
Those Houses of God where the Gospel is truly preached, whatever their
architecture may be, are the beauty and the bulwarks of the land! God
bless them! Wherever the Lord's people are gathered together, in a
cathedral or in a barn–it does not matter where–it is none other than
the House of God and the very gate of Heaven when God is there! And who
among us would dare to stay away? As long as we have legs to carry us
and health with which to use those legs, let us be found among the
waiting assemblies in God's sanctuary!

For, once more, it seems to me that public worship on earth is a
rehearsal for the service of Heaven. We shall sing together, there,
Brothers and Sisters, not solos, but grand chorales and choruses! We
shall take parts in the Divine oratorio of redemption–it will not be
some one melodious voice, alone, that shall lift up the eternal
hallelujah! I spoke playfully of our brother Mayers singing the
Hallelujah Chorus all by himself, but neither he nor any other man can
do that! We shall all have to take our parts to make the harmony
complete. I may never be able to rise to certain notes unless my voice
shall be wondrously changed, but some other sinner, saved by Grace,
will run up the scale–nobody knows how high– and what a range of
melody the music will have in Heaven!

I believe that our poor scales and modes of singing, here, are nothing
at all compared with what there will be in the upper regions! There,
the bass shall be deeper and yet the notes shall be higher than those
of earth. Even the crash of the loudest thunder shall be only like a
whisper in comparison with the celestial music of the new song before
the Throne of God! John spoke of it as "the voice of many waters." The
waves of one ocean can make a deafening, booming noise, but in Heaven
there shall be, as it were, the sound of sea on sea, Atlantic upon
Pacific, one piled upon another and all dashing and crashing with the
everlasting hallelujahs from the gladsome hearts of the multitude that
no man can number! I expect to be there and I remember that verse in
one of our hymns that says–

"I would begin the music here,

And so my soul should rise;

Oh, for some heavenly notes to bear

My passions to the skies!"

But you cannot sing that heavenly anthem alone, because however well
you can sing by yourself, that is not the way you will have to sing in
Heaven–there you will have to sing in harmony with all the
blood-washed hosts. Therefore let us often come up to the Lord's House,
and when we are gathered together, let us again take up the words of
Dr. Watts, and say–

"I have been there and still would go, 'Tis like a little Heaven
below." That little Heaven below shall help to prepare us for the great
Heaven above! That is our first observation, then. It is well to
worship God in public.

II. Secondly, IT IS WELL TO HAVE A REASON WHEN WE GO UP TO PUBLIC
WORSHIP. "Two men went up into the Temple to pray." They went there for
that express purpose.

Now, whenever we go to the assembly of God's people, we should have
some good reason–and the right reason is that which these two men
had–they went up to the Temple to pray. I would rather that you came
with a bad reason than that you did not come at all. I have known
people come to pick pockets and yet they have gone away with a
blessing. I am sorry if any of you came, tonight, for that reason, yet
I am glad that you are here. Perhaps friends will prevent you from
committing the sin of theft by taking a little extra care of their
pockets! I have known persons go into the House of God out of sheer
mockery and yet God has blessed them, for His ways are strangely
sovereign. But that is to be ascribed to matchless mercy and it is not
the way we ought to appear before the Lord!

When we go to the sanctuary, we should go for a reason, we should go up
to pray–we should not go merely from custom. Do we not often do that?
Not so much on Thursday nights, I think, for people come, then, because
they like to come. But on Sundays it is such a proper thing with
certain persons to go to a place of worship that they almost wish it
was not so proper and they would like to have a good excuse for staying
home! Well, if you come only out of custom and you do not get a
blessing, I pray you, do not wonder at it! If you do not come for
anything and you do not get anything, do not be disappointed! If you go
to a shop across the road and do not mean to buy anything, do not be
surprised if you come out with nothing–and if you come here and do not
need anything, very well, you will go away with nothing! Is it not just
what you might have expected? He who goes to the river and takes no rod
or net with him, will have no fish in his basket, even though there may
be shoals of them in the water! So, if we want to be blessed in our
worship, we must come with a reason, even as these two men went up into
the Temple "to pray."

Neither do I think that we should come up to the assembly of God's
people merely to hear sermons. The proper thing is to come "to pray."
"But we do hear sermons," says one. Yes, but I hope that does not
hinder your praying! Somebody said, the other day, that people who go
to Church go to pray, but that we who go to Chapel go to hear sermons.
My dear Friend, that remark shows what sort of sermons you get at
Church, because those who come to hear us preach pray while we are
preaching and they find that there is nothing that helps them to pray
as much as a good sermon does! In fact, there is no worship of God that
is better than the hearing of a sermon! I venture to say that if a
sermon is well heard, it puts faith in exercise as you believe it, it
puts love in exercise as you enjoy it, it puts gratitude in exercise as
you think of all the blessings that God has given to you!

If the sermon is what it should be, it stirs all the coals of fire in
your spirit and makes them burn with a brighter flame and a more
vehement heat. To imply that hearing a sermon is not worship is really
to slander your minister! It must be a very bad sermon in which there
is, as it were, a jerk out of the prayers to get into it, for the
supplication should lead up to the sermon, and then the discourse
should be a continuation of the prayer that has preceded it and bring
it back upon the mind, again, so that all present may pray the better
and worship God the more acceptably because of the sermon to which they
have been listening.

Still, if anybody comes to hear a sermon, especially as, perhaps, some
of you came while I was away, to criticize the preacher, that is not
the way to get a blessing! I do not mind if you criticize me–you may
do that when you like–only you will not get blessed by doing it. But
when there are other preachers here and someone says that he does not
like this one, and another says that he does not like the other, then,
if you do not get a blessing out of the service, who is to blame? "Two
men went up into the Temple to pray." And if we go to the House of God
and seek to turn the whole of the worship into a prayer, we shall not
come away without a blessing! The main objective in all worship is that
we get near to God and really pray to Him.

Neither do I think that we should go to the House of God merely to get
comforted and cheered. That is a very sweet result from hearing the
Word of God, but it should not be our main objective in going to hear
it–we should meet together that we may draw near to God. If it is the
Lord's will not to comfort but to rebuke us, and if it is His purpose
not to cheer but to cast us down, we shall still feel, "What I received
came from God. I prayed to Him and He spoke to me and I had special
fellowship with the living God, while I was also in communion with my
Brothers and Sisters in Christ. That is what I went for, and that is
what I have had."

The publican teaches us what we should go to the House of God to do and
to say. There should be, in God's Presence, confession of sin. We
should, each one of us, when we draw near to the Lord, bow down in His
Presence with reverent awe. If the very angels veil their faces when
they come near Him, we must humbly bow before Him when we come to
worship in His House! He is in Heaven and we are upon earth. He is our
Father, but He is also our Father who is in Heaven–and we poor sinful
creatures can never come into the light of His Presence without
perceiving that we are full of sin. I have heard some people talk about
"walking in the light as God is in the light," as if that meant that
they had no sin. Listen to what the Apostle John says, "If we walk in
the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another."
And then, "the blood of Jesus Christ His Son," is still needed, for
even then it, "cleanses us from all sin." Without its continual
application, there would be no walking in the light–and the more
walking in the Light of God there is, the clearer will be the
perception of every speck and stain in the character! So, the more true
our worship is, the more certain shall we be to make confession of sin.

Communion with God and confession of sin should always be remembered by
us when we come up to the House of

God.

Then there should be asking for mercy. We should come as paupers
seeking relief. We should come as rebels craving pardon. We should come
as pardoned ones still asking renewed tokens of forgiveness–as men,
once washed, who still come, that their feet may be cleansed–that they
may be clean every whit as they pursue their course on the journey of
life.

In the publican's prayer there is, in the Greek, a reference to
sacrifice. He cried, "Lord, be propitious to me, the sinner." "Have
mercy upon me for the sake of the Great Propitiation, the Great
Expiation." They who come up to God's House for the right reason, come
to find Jesus, to prove the power of His precious blood, to be perfumed
with the incense of His all-sufficient merit and to be covered with His
matchless righteousness! That is the right way of coming up to the
assembly of God's people, to speak with Him humbly, for we are sinful.
Prayerfully, for we are full of need. Believingly, for Jesus has
offered a Sacrifice and we are accepted in and through Him. That, dear
Friends, is the second division of my discourse–it is well to have a
reason when we go up to public worship.

I will pause, here, and pass a few questions round for everyone to ask,
"Did I come, tonight, for such a reason? Is that my general habit, to
go up to my place of worship for such a reason? Or do I go jauntily, as
if it were an ordinary transaction to go up for the worship of God?" I
will not propose any answers to you–your own consciences will be able
to give the reply. Only let them speak and God bless the inquiry to you
all!

III. Thirdly, IT IS POSSIBLE TO GO UP TO PUBLIC WORSHIP WITH A GOOD
REASON AND YET TO FORGET IT. "Two men went up into the Temple to pray;
the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican."

It was very remarkable that a Pharisee should forget his reason–that
is the one point concerning him to which I am going to call your
attention–he went up to the Temple to pray, but he did not pray. He
never prayed a word, but he did something else. If it had been written,
"Two men went up into the Temple to boast," I would give the Pharisee
the palm, for he certainly did that magnificently! But as it is said,
"Two men went up into the Temple to pray," then it is certain that this
Pharisee quite forgot why he had come, for he never prayed at all!

Well, now, who was the gentleman that forgot his reason? It was the
person who ought especially to have remembered it, for he was a
Pharisee! By profession he was a separatist from others because of his
supposed peculiar holiness. He was a man amazingly acquainted with the
Word of God, at least, with the letter of it. He wore some little black
boxes between his eyes with texts of Scripture inscribed upon them and
he wore others round his wrist. And he had very broad blue borders on
his garments, for he was particularly observant of what he read in the
Law of Moses. And, generally, a Pharisee was a teacher. He was first
cousin to a Scribe and often was a Scribe, himself. He had written out
a copy of the Law and he had its precepts at his fingertips!

Now, surely, if there is anybody who goes up to the Temple to pray,
this is the man who will pray. If anybody forgets why he came, it will
not be this person! But, listen. That was the very man who did forget
all about it and this may be true of a minister, a deacon, an elder,
one of the Brothers and Sisters who prays at Prayer Meetings, the
leader of a Bible class, a teacher in the Sunday school, the best sort
of people. "Oh," you exclaim, "we cannot say anything but what is
honorable of them!" And yet it was one of this class who forgot why he
went up into the Temple! Let me remind you Church members who make a
loud profession, that it was a great professor who went up to the
Temple to pray and did not do it! What would you say to your boy, who
went to a shop, and then came home and said that he had forgotten his
reason? And what will you say to yourself, dear Friend, especially if
you happen to be somebody notable, if it should be you who went up to
the Temple to pray, and did not pray? Oh, do not let it be so in your
case! Do not, tonight, leave this house till you have had real
fellowship with God, through JESUS CHRIST His Son, if you have never
had it before!

How do we know that this man forgot his reason? We know it by what he
said. He did not pray at all. He said, "God, I thank You that I am not
as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this
publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I
possess." By his words he must be judged, as you and I will be–and his
words go to prove that he forgot why he went up to the Temple. He acted
as though he was in his own house, praising himself, instead of being
in God's House, where the Lord, alone, is to be praised!

Why did this man fall into this great blunder and forget why he went up
to the Temple? He did it because he was so full of himself that there
was no room for God in his heart. He was so satisfied with himself that
he felt no need of prayer. He already had all that he required and he
had so much that he could only stand still and overflow with a kind of
gratitude to the one to whom he owed everything, namely, himself.
Though he said, "God, I thank Fou," He did not mean it–he meant all
the praise for himself! He was so fine a bird and had such rich
feathers that he felt that everybody ought to admire him as much as he
admired himself!

Well now, Brothers and Sisters, you will say to me, "Has this any
bearing upon us?" Listen. Do you ever feel perfectly satisfied with
yourselves? Are there not times when there is no sin that burns the
conscience, when you think that you are somebody, a pattern saint, a
highly experienced good old man, a rare Christian matron, and so on?
The devil tells you all that, does he not? And you believe him! Or else
you say that you are such a smart young man–you have only lately
joined the Church, yet you have already got into the Lord's work in a
wonderful way–there must be a great deal in you. You do not put this
boasting into English, because we do not talk English to our hearts
when we get proud–it is a sort of Greek which we talk, by which we try
to conceal our own meaning from ourselves! Then we feel, perhaps, that
we are getting perfect–and that is the time when we forget to pray!
And we go into the House of God and, when we come out, we make some
remark about the preacher's manner, or about Sister So-and-So, whose
bonnet is really too smart for a Christian woman to wear, or about our
friend, So-and-So, who spoke rather roughly to us. We–WE– WE–we are
so good that we can find fault with all others and say, "God, I thank
You that I am not as other men are, or even as this publican!" And then
we do not pray.

Whenever you get one inch above the ground in your own esteem, you are
that inch too high! The way to Heaven is down, down, down! As to self,
it must sink. Our sense of sin must grow deeper and deeper, and a sense
of obligation to Grace must be more and more fully impressed upon our
heart until we are able to say with great emphasis, though it is in the
deep silence of the soul, "God be merciful to me, the sinner!"
Otherwise, we shall come to the Temple on the reason of prayer and we
shall forget it. We shall go to the closet to pray and yet shall not
pray. Or we shall read the Bible and not find anything upon which to
feed our souls because we are not hungry, but full. We shall not seek
true wealth, because we shall fancy we are not poor, but rich. We shall
not go to the Source of all might because we shall imagine we are not
weak, but strong. If we go up to the Temple as the Pharisee did, there
will be nothing for us, even in the place where prayer is known to be
made.

IV. So I close this discourse with a fourth observation. IT IS POSSIBLE
TO CARRY OUT OUR REASON FOR

GOING TO PUBLIC WORSHIP. We can go up to the Temple to pray and really
pray!

Who is the man who is most likely to pray? According to this parable,
it was the publican. It was a man under a sense of sin. It was a man
who felt that he was the sinner, even if nobody else was a sinner. It
was this man to whom sin was a reality, not a fiction, and to whom the
mercy of God was a real need, and not a mere doctrine, who craved that
mercy at the Throne of God and felt that only Sovereign Grace could
give it! It was this man who pleaded the precious blood of the
Propitiation and felt that only by that way could he receive pardon.
That was the man who truly prayed! Oh, have I not, sometimes, gone to
pray with a breaking heart, groaning, crying and longing to see my
Lord's face, and to have a sense of acceptance in the Beloved? And I
have come away and felt that I had not prayed because I could not use
language and words such as I would wish to use–and yet, on looking
back, I have seen that it was then that I prayed most!

Next to the sense of sin, the publican had a sense of need. When the
need is felt the heaviest, prayer is truest. When the soul is lowest,
then the flood of supplication is the highest. I am sure you pray best
when you have least satisfaction with yourself, and you get nearest to
God when you get farthest from self. When you feel that you are not
worthy to lift up your eyes to Heaven, it is then that Heaven's eyes
look down on you! The sorrowful thought of a broken heart is
immeasurably better than the indifference of a callous spirit. Bless
God for a humble mind that trembles at His Word–it is much better than
that presumption which puts aside all feeling. There are some who will
go to Heaven questioning their own state all the way, yet they will
arrive there safely. And there are some who never doubted their state
who may have to doubt it when it is too late! Anyway, it is a deep
sense of sin, a deep sense of need, a deep sense of dependence upon
Sovereign Grace, that helps a man to come to the House of God and to go
away with his mission accomplished.

Let us all try to bring our needs before God. Let us sink ourselves in
His Presence into the very depths, and then let us come and joyfully
take what He freely offers to all who trust His dear Son! Let us
receive Grace at His hands, not as courtiers who have a right, but as
those who feel like dogs under the table and yet cry, "Lord, even the
dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table."

The publican excites our pity as we hear his groans and sighs, and see
him smite upon his breast. But when we know that this is the man whom
God blessed, and that he went to his house justified, rather than the
other, we no longer pity him, but we seek to emulate his repentance and
his Grace, and we pray the Lord to help us, thus, to come to His feast
with a hearty appetite, thus to come to His wardrobe conscious of our
own rags, thus to come to His fullness admitting our own emptiness,
thus to come to the Fountain of Eternal Life feeling that apart from it
we are dead! Then shall we truly pray, even as this despised publican
did!

Poor Soul, almost in despair, you think, "I have no right to be here. I
am so guilty, I am so vile." You are the very sort of sinner Christ
died to save! Not sham sinners who have to pretend to be sinners, but
you miserable sinners, you real sinners! Not you who make marks on your
skin, like some beggars do, that you may seem to be wounded, but you
who are as bad as you can be–you who have sinned so deeply that you
feel as if you were already lost, you who lie at Hell's dark door, you
who are dragged about by the hair of your head by the foul fiend of the
Pit–you who are in your own esteem the worst of all men! Come to
Christ tonight!

Make way for them! Stand back, for these are the people He came to
save! He has come "to seek and to save that which was lost." Believe
that Christ died to save you, and you are saved! Throw yourself on His
atoning Sacrifice, and it avails for you at once! Glorify Him by
trusting Him for your salvation! Let Him be your High Priest and, from
first to last, your Savior, and He is yours as surely as you are a
living man or woman! Go your way justified rather than the other who
does not need the Propitiation of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord bless
you! Amen.

EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM 122; LUKE 18:1-14.

We will read two portions of Scripture relating to public worship. The
first will be Psalm 122, one of David's "Songs of degrees."

Psalm 122:1. I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the
House of the LORD. "I was glad for my own sake, for I hungered and
thirsted to go into the House of the Lord. I was glad for the sake of
those who offered to go with me, for I delight to see in others a
longing desire to profit by the means of Grace. I was glad when they
said unto me, 'Let us go into the house of the Lord.'"

2, 3. Our feet shall stand within your gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is
built as a city that is compact together. So is every true Church of
God when it is in a healthy state. There are no divisions, no
schisms–"Jerusalem is built as a city that is compact together." It is
not a long straggling street, a dislocated village, but all the houses
are rightly and regularly placed and surrounded with strong munitions
of defense against the adversary. May this Church always be blessed
with such unity that it shall be as a city that is compact together!

4. Where the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, unto the testimony
of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the LORD. We should go up to
the House of God, then, for two purposes. First, "unto the testimony of
Israel," that is, to hear what God testifies to us and, also, to
publicly testify our confidence in Him. And, next, we should go up "to
give thanks unto the name of the Lord." Especially should we do this
when we have been restored from beds of languishing sickness and pain,
or when we come up from the house of mourning. But what is there in
God's House that should tempt us to go there?

5. For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of
David. The preaching of the Gospel is like the setting up of a Throne
of Judgment, "for the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper
than any two-edged sword, piercing, even, to the dividing asunder of
soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of
the thoughts and intents of the heart." And long before the last Great
Judgment Day arrives, and the final assize begins, the ministry of the
Gospel is God's Judgment Seat at which ungodly men may learn what they
are in the sight of the Judge of All– what their present state of
condemnation is and what it will finally be unless they repent!

6. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Ask that she may be free from
persecution without, and from anything like disturbance within–"Pray
for the peace of Jerusalem."

6. They shall prosper that love You. Neglect of the means of Grace is
the death of all soul-prosperity. But an earnest love of the House of
God and all who belong to God will bring us true spiritual prosperity.

7-9. Peace be within your walls, and prosperity within your palaces.
For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be within
you. Because of the House of the LORD our God I will seek your good.
Now let us read a short passage out of the Gospel according to Luke.

Luke 18:1-7. And He spoke a parable unto them to this end, that men
ought always to pray, and not to faint; saying, There was in a city a
judge which feared not God, neither regarded man: and there was a widow
in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of my adversary.
And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself,
Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet because this widow troubles
me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And
the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge says. And shall not God
avenge His own elect which cry day and night unto Him, though He bear
long with them? He hears their prayer a long time because it does not
weary Him. It pleases Him! He loves to hear their sighs and cries, but
will He not yield to their entreaties? What do you think? Shall not the
good, gracious, loving God yield, at length?

8. I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the
Son of Man comes, shall He find faith on the earth? Faith enough to
make such prayers as this? Faith enough to pray with importunity? Oh,
if we had faith enough to resolve to have a blessing and determined
never to cease crying to God until we had it, we should have far more
favors than we have so far gained from our God!

9-12. And He spoke this parable unto certain which trusted in
themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: two men went
up into the Temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a
publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank
You, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers,
or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of
all that I possess. A fine peacock, truly! See how he spreads out his
feathers and struts before God, glorifying himself?

13. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as
his eyes unto Heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be
merciful to me a sinner. "The sinner," it should be–it is emphatically
so in the Greek. There is a Pharisee, the righteous man according to
his own estimate, and all the rest were sinners. Here is the publican,
he is the sinner, and he thinks everybody else is righteous. These were
two very conspicuous individuals, the self-righteous man and the
sinner! And they are both here tonight! I will not ask them to stand
up, but no doubt they are both of them present. Now what became of
them?

14. I tell you, this man–The sinner

14. Went down to his house justified rather than the other: for
everyone that exalts himself shall be abased; and he that humbles
himself shall be exalted. It is God's usual method to reverse what man
does and to turn things the other way around–"Everyone that exalts
himself shall be abased; and he that humbles himself shall be exalted."
You remember how the Virgin Mary, in her song, praised the Lord for
this very habit of His–"He has put down the mighty from their seats
and exalted them of low degree. He has filled the hungry with good
things; and the rich He has sent away empty." That is His regular way
of working and He will continue to do so!

IST.