The refusal of prayer.
"How long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people?" The sign of the anger was God's not heeding their cry. "They asked and received not, because they asked amiss." The Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 1:15) even represents God as saying to his sinful people, "When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood." And the prophet, for himself, says (Isaiah 59:2), "Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear." And a psalmist expresses the true feeling when he writes, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." "Angry against the prayer" expresses quite a human kind of feeling. When men refuse our request, our first thought is that they must be angry with us. This, then, represents man's thought and fear concerning God; but it does not precisely represent the actual fact. God is angry, as anxious, loving parents are angry. He refuses prayer for the sake of the offerer. And parents know that it is often much harder to refuse a request than to grant it. The refusal is love, not anger. The exiles ask the question of the text in an impulsive spirit, half complainingly. We, may ask quietly and calmly their question. How long wall God hold aloof from men's prayers?
I. GOD NEVER REFUSES PRAYER IN "MERE SOVEREIGNTY." Caprice or jealous feeling must never be associated in our minds with God. "We speak of the Divine sovereignty; but sovereignty is not an arbitrary, capricious thing; it is a righteous and holy thing; and God must ever act in conformity with the unalterable principles of his character." "There is no mystery in those temporary desertions with which God sometimes visits his own people. The reason of them is to be found in themselves—in their sinfulness, in their unsteadfastness, in their unfaithfulness." All Divine withdrawals and temporary refusals mean discipline.
II. GOD MAY HOLD ALOOF UNTIL JUDGMENT HAS DONE ITS WORK. Note that this involves uncertainty as to time of restoration. Judgment acting on different moral natures is prolonged according to the response different natures make to it. It would be no kindness to resume gracious relations before the disciplinary work was complete.
III. GOD MAY HOLD ALOOF UNTIL HUMILITY TONES THE PRAYER. Take humility as representing the state of mind when self-win and self-pleasing are mastered. Humility is holding our will in submission to God's will.
IV. GOD MAY HOLD ALOOF UNTIL MAN IS UNITED IN HIS PRAYER. Part of a man may pray for, and part of him may pray against. Will may pray for, heart may pray against. Duty may pray for, feeling may pray against. Illustrate by the figure in Hosea 2:21, Hosea 2:22.
V. GOD MAY HOLD ALOOF UNTIL HIS ANSWER CAN BE THE FULLEST BLESSING. Oftentimes to give too soon would but be to give a part. God waits till we are empty of self, and can be filled with himself.—R.T.