I. When we read in this and in so many other passages that our blessed Lord in the days of His flesh offered prayers unto God, it greatly concerns us that we do not accept an explanation only too commonly suggested of these His prayers. It is sometimes said that Christ our Lord prayed by way of example, that so He might teach us the duty of prayer, and that His prayers had no other purpose and meaning but this. Doubtless He was our example in this as in every other point. But His prayers were no such hollow, unreal things, as we must needs confess them to have been, if such was the onlyintention which they had. Our Lord, the head of the race of men, but still man as truly as He was God, prayed, as any one of His servants might pray, because in prayer is strength; in prayer is victory over temptation; in prayer, and in the grace of God obtained through prayer, is deliverance from all evil.
II. If times of prayer were needful for Christ, how much more for all others; for as He was in the world, so are we; the only difference being that we lie open to the injurious influences which it exerts, as He neither did nor could; that the evil in the world finds an echo and an answer in our hearts which it found not at all in His. In a world where there is so much to dissipate and distract the spirit, how needful for us is that communion with God, in which alone the spirit collects itself at its true centre, which is God again; in a world where there is so much to ruffle the spirit's plumes, how needful that entering into the secret of the pavilion, which will alone bring it back to composure and peace; in a world where there is so much to sadden and depress, how blessed that communion with Him, in whom is the one source and fountain of all true gladness and abiding joy; in a world where so much is ever seeking to unhallow our spirits, to render them common and profane, how high the privilege of consecrating them anew in prayer to holiness and to God.
R. C. Trench, Sermons in Westminster Abbey,p. 138.
References: Luke 5:16. Homiletic Magazine,vol. vi., p. 205; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,9th series, p. 128; Homilist,vol. vi., p. 229. Luke 5:16-26. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xvii., No. 981.Luke 5:17. Ibid.,vol. xii., No. 720. Luke 5:18-25. G. Macdonald, Miracles of Our Lord,p. 145.Luke 5:22; Luke 5:25. N. Smyth, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvii., p. 72.Luke 5:26. Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Gospels and Acts,p. 88.