Luke 11:13 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children… Cotton Mather, whose endeavours as a parent were highly blessed, says: "Let my prayers for my children be daily, with constancy. Yea, by name let me mention each one of them every day before the Lord. I would importunately beg for all suitable blessings to be bestowed on them; that God would give them grace and give them glory, and withhold no good thing from them; that God would smile on their education and give His good angels charge over them and keep them from evil, that it may not grieve them; that when their father and mother forsake them, the Lord may take them up. With importunity I would plead that promise on their behalf: 'The heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him,' Oh, happy children, if by asking I may obtain the Holy Spirit for them!" which every natural man, every man who lets himself alone and lives practically without God, apart from Christ, in the world, has in him a dumb spirit, and can only lose that spirit under the healing touch of Christ. 1. I might speak — but it would not affect or be true of all who hear me — of that calamity, that curse, which we designate as a bad temper. Has any one here present a bad temper? Have .you not been reminded sometimes, in that experience, of the dumb spirit spoken of in the text? That sullen silence; that overcast brow; that gloomy, morose, most irritating reserve; that gathering, threatening, overhanging cloud of dull, dark, speechless displeasure, by which a long evening has been rendered miserable, and upon which night and sleep have come without mitigation and without relief; that obstinate nursing and cherishing of an untold grudge, which wakens again in the morning to its last night's sullenness, and seems almost to pride itself upon its tenacity and its perseverence; was not this indeed an example of possession by a dumb spirit? 2. Mark that man — his name indeed is Legion — who lives what is called an entirely preoccupied and self-engrossed life; who has his business and follows it, has his interests and pursues them, has even his pleasures and enjoys them, but in all these has in reality no partner and no associate; looks to himself as to all that most intimately touches him, and himself only; excludes from his true confidence alike friend and brother, alike child and wife; gives out in social converse the merest superficialities of his thoughts, and in domestic intercourse the veriest dregs and refuse of his being; locks up in his own bosom the affections which God gave him for blessing, pro-supposes selfishness in others because he feels it in himself, and will trust no other soul with that confidence which he knows could have no reception and no reciprocity in his own. 3. It is made in Scripture both the duty and also the test of a Christian, that his speech be not only innocent, but beneficial; not only kind and frank, but consistent also and edifying. Now, if this be so, by what name can we designate that use of speech which altogether overlooks or refuses this high object? Let us all look back, my brethren, this morning upon our past employment of the gift of language. What shall we say of it? Is not the review most disheartening? To whom can we point as having been benefited by our possession of this marvellous thing? Nay — for effects are God's, not ours — when did we ever set ourselves seriously to do good by our conversation. Is it not true, alas! that as to any value, any worth, contained in the gift of speech, we might as well have been bereft of it. In the judgment of Him who heareth as well as seeth in secret, the spirit which has possessed us has been no better than a dumb spirit. 4. It has been so towards man. We have done no good with our speech. And how has it been towards God? The text stands in immediate connection with a passage of Holy Scripture about prayer. Strong encouragement has been given to our halting, failing faith, in reference to the duty of seeking God in prayer. A form of prayer has been given, in answer to the request of the disciples, Lord, teach us to pray; and words have been added, which show beyond all question that it is not in God but in ourselves that the work of prayer is straitened. Then follows immediately the brief narrative of the text: "Jesus was casting out a devil, and it was dumb." If the possession of the evil one makes us dumb (as to all that is valuable) towards man, so also does it towards God. (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? |
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