Threefold import of Paul’s request, when he desires that utterance be prayed for 2/2

 Second.  When the apostle desires ‘utterance’ to be given him, he may mean that he may have a word given him to preach—Ë<" µ@ *@2,\0 8`(@H, ac­cording to that which Christ promiseth, ‘It shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak,’ Matt. 10:19.  From which we may note:

1. That ministers have no ability of their own for their work.  O how long may they sit tumbling their books over, and beating their brains, till God comes to their help; and then, as Jacob’s venison, it is brought to their hand!  If God drop not down his assistance, we write with a pen that hath no ink.  If any in the world need walk pendantly upon God more than others, the minister is he.
2. Observe that those who are most eminent for gifts and grace have meanest thoughts of themselves, and are acquainted most with their own insufficiency. Paul himself is not ashamed to let Christians know that if God brings it not into him he cannot deal out to them; he cannot speak a word to them till he re­ceives it from God: ‘Not that we are suffi­cient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament,’ II Cor. 3:5, 6.  He is the able minister whom God enables.
3. Observe, the meanest Christian may, by his faithful prayers, help to make the minister’s sermon for him.  ‘Pray,’ saith the apostle, ‘that utterance may be given unto me;’ that I may have from God what I should deliver to others.  O what a useful instrument is a praying Christian! he may not only help his own minister, but others even all the world over.  Paul was now at Rome, and sends for prayers as far as to the saints at Ephesus.

           Third.  By ‘utterance’ he may mean a faculty of speech—a readiness and facility to deliver to others what he hath been enabled to conceive in his own mind of the will of God.  Many eminent servants of God have been very sensible of, and much dis­couraged for, their impedite speech and hesitant de­livery.  Now this may proceed from a  natural cause, or supernatural.

1. From a natural cause.  As,

           (1.) From a defect in the instruments of speech; which some think was the cause of Moses’ complaint, ‘I am not eloquent,...but I am slow of speech,’ Ex. 4:10.  And this discouraged him from being sent on God’s errand.  But God can compensate the hesitancy of the tongue with the divine power of the matter delivered.  This Moses, who was so ‘slow of speech,’ yet was ‘mighty in words,’ Acts 7:22, able to make Pharaoh’s stout heart to tremble, though he might stammer in the delivery of it.  God promised indeed to be ‘with his mouth;’ yet, it is probable, he did not cure his natural infirmity, for we find him complaining after­wards of it.  Such natural imperfections, therefore, should neither discourage the minister nor prejudice the people; but rather make him more careful that the matter be weighty he delivers, and them that their attention be more close and united.

           (2.) From a weak memory.  He that reads in a bad print, where many letters are defaced, cannot read fast and smooth, but will oft be stopped to study what is next.  Memory is an inward table or book, out of which the minister reads his sermon unseen.  If the notions or meditations we have to deliver be not fairly imprinted on our memory, no wonder that the tongue is oft at a stand, except we should speak to no purpose.  If the hopper be stopped, the mill cannot grind; or if the pipe that feeds the cistern be obstruc­ted, it will be seen at the cock.  When God hath assis­ted in the study, we need him to strengthen our memory in the pulpit.

           (3.) From fear.  If the heart faint, it is no wonder the tongue falters.  This, it is like, was at the bottom of Jeremiah's excuse: ‘Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child,’ Jer. 1:6.  That is, I want the courage and spirit of a man to wrestle with these oppositions that will certainly meet me in the work. That this was his infirmity appears by the method God takes for the cure: ‘Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee,...be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee,’ ver. 7, 8.

2. From a supernatural cause; where none of these defects are, but the minister stands best fur­nished and in greatest readiness for his work.  Yet, let but God turn the cock, and there is a stop put to the whole work.  Not only ‘the preparations of the heart,’ but ‘the answer of the tongue,’ both are ‘of the Lord,’ Prov. 16:1.  God keeps the key of the mouth as well as of the heart; not a word can get out, but sticks in the teeth while [i.e.until] God opens the doors of the lips to give it a free egress.  He opened the mouth of the ass, and stopped the mouth of that wicked prophet its master.  Hear him confessing as much to Balak: ‘Lo, I am come unto thee: have I now any power at all to say anything? the word that God putteth in my mouth, that shall I speak,’ Num. 22:38.  Never man de­sired more to be speaking than he; that which should have got him his hire, the wages of unrighteousness, for he loved it dearly.  But God had tongue-tied him. Nay, even holy men, when they would speak the truth, and that for God, cannot deliver themselves of what they have conceived in their inward meditations. Hence David’s prayer: ‘Open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise.’  Ezekiel he would ‘make his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth;’ he should not reprove them though he would, Eze. 3:26.

Threefold import of Paul’s request, when he desires that utterance be prayed for 1/2

           First. By ‘utterance’ may be meant liberty to preach the gospel;—that his mouth might not be stopped by the persecutor, who had him already his prisoner.  Now he desires they would pray for him, that he might not be quite taken off his work: where,

1. Observe what a grievous affliction it is to a faithful minister to be denied liberty to preach the gospel.  So long as Paul might preach, though in a chain, he is not much troubled; the word is free, though he be bound.  But, to have his mouth stopped, to see poor souls ready to perish for want of that bread which he hath to give out, and yet may not be allowed this liberty, goes to his heart.  ‘O pray,’ saith he, ‘that utterance may be given.’  If he may not preach, neither should he live; for upon this account alone he desired life—the furtherance of their faith, Php. 1:25.  O how far are they from Paul’s mind, to whom it is more tedious to preach than grievous to be kept from the work!  How seldom should we see some in the pulpit, were it not a necessary expedient to bring in their revenue at the year's end!
2. The liberty of the gospel, and of the ministers to deliver it, are in an especial manner to be prayed for.

           (1.) Because this is strongly opposed and ma­ligned by Satan and his instruments.  Wherever God opens a door for his gospel there Satan raiseth his batteries.  ‘For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries,’ I Cor. 16:9. No sooner doth God open his shop-windows, but the devil is at work to shut them again, or hinder the free-trade of his gospel.  Other men's servants can work peaceably in their master’s shop, but as for God’s servants, every one hath a stone to throw in at them as they pass by.  When Paul began to preach at Thes­salonica, the city was presently in an uproar and cry, ‘These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also,’ Acts 17:6.  Indeed they said true; let the gospel have but liberty and it will ‘turn the world upside down.’  It will make a change, but a happy one.  This the devil knows, and therefore dreads its approach.

           (2.) Because it is the choicest mercy that God can bless a nation with.  Happy are the people that are in such a case.  It is the gospel of the kingdom; it lifts a people up to heaven. We could better spare the sun out of its orb than the preaching of the gospel out of the church.  Souls might find the way to heaven, though the sun sis not lend them its light; nut without the light of truth they cannot take one right step to­wards it.  Work, saith Christ, ‘while ye have the light,’ John 12:36.  Salvation-work cannot be done by the candle‑light of a natural understanding, but by the daylight of gospel revelation; this sun must rise before man can go forth to this labour.

           (3.) It is God’s power to preserve the liberty of his gospel and messengers, in spite of the devil and his instruments.  Therefore, indeed, Paul sends them not to court to beg his liberty, but to heaven.  God had Nero closer prisoner than he had Paul.  ‘Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it,’ Rev. 3:8.  At Ephesus were many adversaries we heard, yet the door was kept open.  Christ carries the keys of the church-door at his girdle: ‘He that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth,’ Rev. 3:7, ‘the key of the house of David,’ so Isa. 22:22.  The church is Christ’s house, and the mas­ter sure will keep the key of his own door.

           (4.) Prayer hath a mighty power with God to preserve or restore liberty to his gospel and messen­gers.  It hath fetched home his servants from banish­ment, it hath brought them out of their dungeon. The prison could not hold Peter when the church was at prayer for him.  It hath had a mighty influence into the church’s affairs when at the lowest ebb.  It was a sad world to the church in Nero’s time, when Paul set the saints a praying for kings and those that were in authority; which prayers, though they were not ans­wered in Nero, yet I doubt not but afterwards they were in Constantine and other Christian princes, under whose royal wing the church of Christ was cherished and protected.

           (5.) Pray for their liberty, because, when the gospel goes away, it goes not alone, but carries away your other mercies along with it.  The hangings that are taken down when the prince removes his court. Where the minister hath not liberty to preach the truth, the people will not long have liberty to profess it.  When it went ill with James the apostle, it went not well with the church at Jerusalem, Acts 12:1, 2, nor can that place look long to enjoy its outward peace. When God removes his gospel, it is to make way for worse company to come, even all his sore plagues and judgements, Jer. 6:8.