Notice: (1) Some of the reasons for intercessory prayer, and (2) some of its encouragements.
I. Why is intercessory prayer a great thing? (1) St. Paul lays it down as a positive command, and makes it the primary obligation of every Christian. (2) We are never walking so exactly and so closely in the footsteps of Jesus Christ as when we are praying for any one. (3) We never more effectually benefit ourselves than when we pray for others. (4) We nave no talent of greater usefulness than the talent of intercessory prayer. Every other channel of good is circumscribed, and illness and absence take their place. But this has no limit. Wherever we are, under whatever circumstances, we can do it; and in doing it, we can reach those otherwise perfectly inaccessible to us the guiltiest and the farthest off from God.
II. The encouragements to intercessory prayer are also four. (1) The first lies in the character of God, that all we bring in are dear to Him, that "He willeth not that any should perish, but that all should be saved," and that it must be a thing very dear to God when one of His children brings another of His children and lays that child at their common Father's feet. (2) The second great encouragement is in the fact that there is never a commandment in which there is not rolled up a promise. We have seen that it is commanded, "Pray for one another;" we safely argue that it would never have been commanded if it were not in God's mind to grant the thing which we are told to ask. (3) Thirdly, the general promise of prayer is exceedingly large. Whatsoever is of faith is sure. The success of that prayer is covenanted. "Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer believing, ye shall receive." (4) Fourthly, almost all our Lord's miracles were done in answer to intercessory prayer. There is no positive promise to intercessory prayer, but, short of the actual undertaking of God, there is everything to give hope and all but certainty when we ask for any one of those things which we know are after the mind of God to give to His children, and which Christ has purchased with His own blood.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,9th series, p. 333.
References: 1 Samuel 12:23. J. Harrison, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 49; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvi., No. 1537; J. Keble, Sermons, Academical and Occasional,p. 127. 1 Samuel 12:23-25. G. B. Ryley, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 253. 1 Samuel 12 Parker, vol. vi., p. 315. 1 Samuel 13:1. Homiletic Magazine,vol. viii., p. 164. 1 Samuel 13:3. J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year,vol. i., p. 269. 1 Samuel 13:7. Parker, vol. vii., p. 67.