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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 264. A Life of Intercession
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A Life of Intercession
Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among them that call upon his name.- Psa_99:6.
1. That Samuel could pray for Israel is a sign that he was himself accepted of the Lord. It is a very great privilege to be permitted to pray for our fellow-men. Prayer in each man's case must necessarily begin with personal petitions, for until the man is himself accepted of God he cannot act as an intercessor for others; and herein lies part of the excellence of intercessory prayer, for it is to the man who exercises it aright a mark of inward grace, and a token for good from the Lord. When the heart is enlarged in believing supplication for others, all doubts about personal acceptance with God may cease; He who prompts us to love has certainly given us that love, and what better proof of His favour do we desire? It is a great advance upon anxiety for our own salvation when we have risen out of the narrowness of dread about ourselves into the broader region of care for a brother's soul. He who, in answer to his intercession, has seen others blessed and saved may take it as a pledge of Divine love, and rejoice in the condescending grace of God. Such prayer rises higher than any petition for ourselves, for only he who is in favour with the Lord can venture upon pleading for others. If we read Samuel's life we see how truly this was the case with him. He was accepted of the Lord to make intercession for others. He was born of prayer. A woman of a sorrowful spirit received him from God, and joyfully exclaimed, “For this child I prayed.” He was named in prayer, for, as already observed, his name Samuel signifies “asked of God.” Well did he carry out his name and prove its prophetic accuracy, for, having commenced life by being himself asked of God, he continued asking of God, and all his knowledge, wisdom, justice, and power to rule were things which came to him because “asked of God.” He was nurtured by a woman of prayer at the first, and when he left her it was to dwell in the house of prayer all the days of his life. He was born, named, nurtured, housed, and trained in prayer, and he never departed from the way of supplication.
2. Samuel was called upon to undertake the most difficult of all tasks-a task not indeed so great as, but in a real sense almost more difficult than, that of Moses. For, while Moses had created the nation and its faith, Samuel had to recreate them. He had to restore and rebuild out of ruins. It was a task of extraordinary difficulty. To initiate a national and religious life requires the highest original genius, and such had Moses; but to restore them after they have proved unequal to the hopes under the inspiration of which they were initiated requires, if not absolute originality of genius, certainly a faith and a courage and a patience that are hardly anything less. This was what Samuel set himself to do, and did. And what was the beginning of it? The beginning of it was just that simple personal religion which Samuel had learned as a child, and which, as has already been said, he never lost. Samuel as a child had learned to pray, and now, in the great crisis of his own and his nation's fortunes, he “cried unto the Lord for Israel.” These prayers were one thing which the sword of the triumphing Philistine could not destroy. They were the sacrifice of incense unto God, which remained even though the altar of the tabernacle was in profane hands. All around was heard the voice of lamentation, as women bewailed the loss of the slain; or of reproach and recrimination, as men blamed one another for their calamities; but here was a voice lifted up, not in futile complaining or bitterness, but in humble repentance and reconsecration, and lifted up, not to despairing man but to God, whose grace was not yet exhausted. When the day of restoration came, few, if any, of the people realized how much it owed to these prayers of Samuel.
When Ethelred, the Saxon king of Northumberland, invaded Wales, and was about to give battle to the Britons, he noticed, near the enemy, a host of unarmed men. He inquired who they were, and what they were doing. He was told that they were the monks of Bangor, praying for the success of their countrymen. “Then,” said the Saxon king, “they have begun the fight against us. Attack them first.”
3. From his tender regard for his people, as a father for his children, arises the next affliction of Samuel, on the signs of their unbelief in God in asking for a king; and here again is immediately specified the same never-failing remedy for his sorrow. “But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord.” And what does he then do with their murmurings and obstinate opposition? Did he tell it to his friends, or refer to counsellors for advice? No. “And Samuel,” it is said, “heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the Lord.” And after he has given them a king, the account of Samuel's dealings with them is very beautiful: he seems by prayer, like Elijah afterwards, to hold as it were the elements-the thunder and the rain-in his hands, and this power he uses not to afflict or punish them, but to warn; indeed his unfailing sympathy and great gentleness, and their confidence in his prayers, form the interesting and very soothing part of the history of those days and that hard people. So much is this the case that he comes out strongly, as representing our Blessed Saviour Himself, standing as mediator between God and man with such a tender feeling for their infirmities. He expostulates-warns, yet at the same time comforts and encourages them-and they look to him. “And all the people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God.” “And Samuel said unto the people, Fear not: but serve the Lord with all your heart. For the Lord will not forsake his people.” And then follow these striking words: “Moreover as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you.” Here he shows that he considered these continual intercessions for them so much a part of his own duty that to omit them would be a sin in him; that not only love to them, but duty to God was in his prayers.
It is said that it is impossible for every one to find out what he or she is to do. It is, of course, impossible to know the whole plan. Hannah could not have guessed that Samuel was to be a judge, a founder of the School of Prophets, the greatest statesman that had been since Moses. All she could see was that he was placed where he could learn the will of God; and this she did. Samuel could not tell what office he would fill, what God would tell him to do, but he could make his life as a temple server complete as possible, and so make himself ready for the next thing. And faithfulness in little things marks out a man for great things. Consecration is neither easy nor simple. It implies continuous selection; and selection always implies trouble. But it is in the process of selection that the personality grows and is determined. It is in every choice that it takes a fuller shape. As it goes along the path determined of God, it grows into the likeness of His Son; not indeed, that full Image which reflects all the sons of men, but that particular likeness after which it was created. And whether men accomplish much or little, they accomplish that which God intended them to accomplish. So through this determined set of character, this resolute habit of doing from hour to hour that which the Lord wills, Samuel became one of the great personal forces of the world, and especially of his own nation. As Dean Stanley beautifully says: “His long, protracted life was like the shadow of the great rock of an older epoch projected into the level of a modern age. ‘He judged Israel all his life': even after the monarchy had sprung up, he was still a witness of an earlier and more primitive state. Whatever murmurs or complaints had arisen were always hushed for the moment before his presence. They leaned upon him; they looked back to him even from after ages, as their fathers had leaned upon Moses. And, when the hour of his death came, we are told with a peculiar emphasis of expression that all the Israelites-not one portion or fragment only, as might have been expected in that time of division and confusion-were gathered together, round him who had been the father of all alike, and lamented him, and buried him not in any sacred spot or secluded sepulchre, but in the midst of the home which he had consecrated only by his own long, unblemished career, ‘in his house at Ramah.' ”1 [Note: G. H. S. Walpole, Personality and Power, 82.]