The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 2 — Section 90

Ver. 23.-.The soothing power of prayer. E.ll"ncst effort should be made to realize the strain, and excitement, and fatigue, and distress of that day to Christ. In some senses it was the very hardest day of his active ministry. Appraise carefully the spiritual, and even physical, influence of the following things. 1. Anxiety concerning the excitement of his disciples because the devils had been subject to them on their first mission. 2. Distress on hearing of the violent death of John. 3. Effort to put personal feeling aside in order to teach and heal the crowds who gathered at his land- ing-place. 4. The spiritual strain of expending miraculous force in multiplying the few loaves. 5. Excitement at the dangerous intentions of the people to make him king. 6. Annoyance at his disciples when they would take part with the people. 7. Necessity for acting promptly and vigorously in checking the beginnings of mischief. 8. Pain to find his disciples still imprisoned in material conceptions of him and of his mission. Surely when all was over, the disciples were on the lake, and the last lingerer of the crowd well out of sight, Jesus must have been utterly exhausted, and needed some soothing, healing balm. Where could be get it? He knew. He shows us the place of soothing. It is the place of prayer. I. PuA YEB SOOTHES BY ENABLING us TO CAST OUR OARE ON GOD. The simple soothing mission of prayer is not often dwelt on. It is too much treated as a means of getting something. Its best blessings may be said to be the good things it does for us, rather than the good things it obtains for us. Prayer allays excitement. Prayer soothes the worried. Prayer q niets the restless. Prayer stills our atmospheres. And all because it just means telling God. If we begin to tell excitedly we soon fall into the deep peace which his presence and sympathy always breathe. II. PRAYER SOOTHES BY .t.BmRING us THAT GoD CA.BES FOB us. And that, of necessity, means the mastery of the circumstances that trouble us. We are in the midst of difficulties, and they worry; they seem to be masterful. We go to God in prayer, and feel that he is in the midBt of them, ruling and overruling; and we are calmed and rested. There a.re no real difficulties, "Greater is he who is for us than all who can be against us."-R. T. Ver. 26.-A first lesson on the spiritv,al presence, The answor of the disciples to the sight of Jesus walking on the see. revealed the fact that they shared the superstitious sentiments of their age. They said, "It is a spirit." "Orientals continue to believe, as of old, in supernatural agencies, not only in the all-pervading and all-controlling providence and personal influence of the Deity, which they have ever pushed to extreme fatalism, but also io the existence and activity, either for good or for evil, of spirits and invisible beings, who people the air." Our Lord desired to guide his disciples to worthier apprehensions of spiritnal things, through the proper apprehension of himself as a spiritual Being and a spiritual Messiah. Our Lord had wrought many miracles which displayed his power, and revealed him as (1) Lord of Nature in e.11 her moods; (2) of death in aU rts stages; (3) of devils in all their forms of mischief; ( 4) of souls in e.U their spiritual needs. Now, by this walking on the see., he would reveal to them something of the mystery which belonged to his own Person. And this particular revele.tion was caUed for by the fact that the disciples had enco·araged the attempt of the people to make their Master a merely eart¼J king (John vi. 15). on, XIV, 1-36,] THE GOSPEt ACCORDING TO BT. MATTHEW. 98