Peter’s Prayer
June 10th 1869
by
(1834-1892)
“When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees,
saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” — Luke 5:8.
The disciples had been fishing all
night. They had now given over fishing; they had left their boats and were
mending their nets. A stranger appears. They had seen him, probably, once
before, and they remembered enough of him to command respect. Besides the tone
of voice in which he spoke to them, and his manner, at once ruled their hearts.
He borrowed Simon Peter’s boat and preached a sermon to the listening crowds.
After he had finished the discourse, as though he would not borrow their vessel
without giving them their hire, he bade them launch out into the deep and let down
their nets again. They did so, and, instead of disappointment, they at once
took so vast a haul of fish that the boats could not contain all, and the net
was not strong enough, and began to break. Surprised at this strange miracle,
overawed, probably by the majestic appearance of that matchless One, who had
wrought it, Simon Peter thought himself quite unworthy to be in such company,
and fell on his knees, and cried this strange prayer, “Depart from me, for I am
a sinful man, O Lord.” So I desire that, first of all, we shall hear: —
I. The Prayer In The Worst Sense
We Can Give To It.
It is always wrong to put the worst
construction on anyone’s words, and therefore we do not intend so to do, except
by way of licence, and for a few moments only, to see what might have been made
cut of these words. Christ did not understand Peter so. He put the best
construction upon which he said, but if a caviller had been there, a wrong
interpretation would have been to this sentence: “Depart from me, for I am a
sinful man, O Lord.”
The ungodly virtually pray this
prayer. When the gospel comes to some men, and disturbs their conscience, they
say, “Go thy way for this time; when I have a more convenient season, I will
send for thee.” When some troublesome preacher tells them of their sins, when
he puts a burning truth into their conscience, and rouses them so that they
cannot sleep or rest, they are very angry with the preacher, and the truth that
he was constrained to speak. And if they cannot bid him get out of their way,
they can at roast get out of his way, which comes to the same thing, and the
spirit of it is, “We do not want to give up our sin; we cannot afford to part
with our prejudices, or with our darling lusts, and therefore depart, go out of
our coasts; let us alone; what have we to do with thee Jesus, thou Son of God?
Art thou come to torment us before our time? “Peter meant nothing of this sort,
but there may be some here who do, and whose avoidance of the gospel, whose
inattention to it, whose despite to it, and hatred of it, all put together
virtually make up this cry, “Depart from us, O Christ.”
Alas! I fear there are some Christians who do in fact, I will not say in
intention, really pray this prayer. For instance: if a believer in Christ shall
expose himself to temptation, if he shall find pleasure where sin mingles with
it, if he shall forsake the assemblies of the saints, and find comfort in the
synagogue of Satan; if his life shall be inconsistent practically, and also he
shall become inconsistent by reason of his neglect of holy duties, ordinances,
private prayer, the reading of the Word, and the like — what does such a
Christian say but, “Depart from me, O Lord”? The Holy Spirit abides in our
hearts, and we enjoy his conscious presence if we are obedient to his
monitions; but if we walk contrary to him, he will walk contrary to us and
before long we shall have to say: —
Why does the Holy Spirit withdraw
the sense of his presence? Why, but because we ask him to go? Our sins ask him
to go; our unread Bibles do, as it were, with loud voices ask him to be gone.
We treat that sacred guest as if we were weary of him, and he takes the hint,
and hides his face, and then we sorrow, and begin to seek him again. Peter does
not do so, but we do. Alas! how often ought we to say, “Oh! Holy Spirit,
forgive us, that we so vex thee, that we resist thy admonitions, quench thy
promptings, and so grieve thee! Return unto us, and abide with us evermore.”
This prayer in its worst is sometimes practically offered by Christian
churches. I believe that any Christian church that becomes divided in
feeling, so that the members have no true love one to another, that want of
unity is an act of horrible supplication. It does as much as say, “Depart from
us, thou Spirit of unity! Thou only dwellest where there is love: we will not
have love: we will break thy rest: go from us!” The Holy Spirit delights to
abide with a people that is obedient to his teaching, but there are churches
that will not learn: they refuse to carry out the Master’s will, or to accept
the Master’s Word. They have some other standard, some human book, and in the
excellencies of the human composition they forget the glories of the divine.
Now I believe that where any book, whatever it may be, is put above the Bible,
or even set by the side of it, or where any creed or catechism, however
excellent, is made to stand at all on an equality with that perfect Word of
God, any church that does this, in fact, say, “Depart from us, O Lord,” and
when it comes to actual doctrinal error, particularly to such grevious errors
as we hear of now-a-days, such as baptismal regeneration, and the doctrines
that are congruous thereto, it is, as it were, an awful imprecation, and seems
to say, “Begone from us, O gospel! Begone from us, O Holy Ghost! Give us
outward signs and symbols, and these will suffice us; but depart from us, O
Lord; we are content without thee.” As for ourselves, we may practically pray
this prayer as a church. If our prayer-meetings should be badly attended; if
the prayers at them should be cold and dead; if the zeal of our members should
die out; if there should be no concern for souls; if our children should grow
up about us untrained in the fear of God; if the evangelization of this great
city should be given over to some other band of workers, and we should sit
still, if we should become cold, ungenerous, listless, indifferent — what can
we do worse for ourselves? How, with greater potency, can we put up the
dreadful prayer, “Depart from us: we are unworthy of thy presence: begone, good
Lord! Let ’Ichabod’ be written on our walls; let us be left with all the curses
of Gerizim ringing in our ears.”
I say, then, the prayer may be
understood in this worst sense. It was not so meant: our Lord did not so read
it: we must not so read it concerning Peter, but let us oh! let us take care
that we do not offer it thus, practically concerning ourselves.
But now in the next place we shall
strive to take the prayer as it came from Peter’s lips and heart: —
II. A Prayer We Can Excuse, And
Almost Commend.
Why did Peter say, “Depart from me,
for I am a sinful man, O Lord?” There are three reasons. First, because he was a man; secondly, because he was a sinful man; and again, because he knew this, and became a humble
man.
So, then, the first reason for this
prayer was that Peter knew that he was a
man, and therefore, being a man, he felt himself amazed in the presence of
such an one as Christ. The first sight of God, how amazing to any spirit, even
if it were pure! I suppose God never did reveal himself completely, could never
have revealed him self completely to any creature, however lofty in its
capacity. The Infinite must overwhelm the finite Now, here was Peter, beholding
probably for the first time in his life in a spiritual way the exceeding
splendor and glory of the divine power of Christ. He looked at those fish, and
at once he remembered that night of weary toil, when not a fish rewarded his
patience, and now he saw them in masses in the boat, and all done through this
strange man who sat there, having just preached a still stranger sermon, of
which Peter felt that never man spake like that before, and he did not know how
it was, but he felt abashed; he trembled, he was amazed in the presence of such
an one. I do not wonder, if we read that Rebecca, when she saw Isaac, came down
from her camel and covered her face with her veil; if we read that Abigail,
when she came to meet David, alighted from her ass and threw herself upon her
face, saying, “My Lord, David!”; if we find Mephibosheth depreciating himself
in the presence of King David, and calling himself a dog — I do not wonder that
Peter, in the presence of the perfect Christ, should shrink into nothing, and
in his first amazement at his own nothingness and Christ’s greatness, should
say he scarcely knew what, like one dazed and dazzled by the light,
half-distraught, and scarcely able to gather together his thoughts and put them
connectedly together. The very first impulse was as when the light of the sun
strikes on the eye, and it is a blaze that threatens to blind us. “Oh! Christ,
I am a man; how can I bear the presence of the God that rules the very fishes
of the sea, and works miracles like this?” His next reason was, I have said, because he was a sinful man, and there
is something of alarm, mingled with his amazement. As a man he stood amazed at
the outshining of Christ’s Godhead: as a sinful man he stood alarmed at its
dazzling holiness. I do not doubt that in the sermon which Christ delivered
there was such a clear denunciation of sin, such laying of justice to the line,
and righteousness to the plummet such a declaration of the holiness of God,
that Peter felt himself unveiled, discovered, his heart laid bare: and now came
the finishing stroke. The One who had done this could also rule the fishes of
the sea: he must, therefore, be God, and it was to God that all the defects and
evils of Peter’s heart had been revealed and thoroughly known, and almost fearing
with a kind of inarticulate cry of alarm, because the criminal was in the
presence of the Judge, and the polluted in the presence of the Immaculate he
said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful
man, O Lord.”
But I have added that there was a
third reason, namely, that Peter was a
humble man, as is clear from the saying, because he knew himself, and
confessed bravely that he was a sinful man. You know that sometimes there have
been persons in the world who have suddenly found some king or prince come to
their little cottage, and the good housewife, when the king himself was coming
to her but has felt as if the place itself was so unfit for him that, though
she would do her best for his majesty, and was glad in her soul that he would
honor her hovel with his presence, yet she could not help saying, “Oh! that
your majesty had gone to a worthier house, had gone on to the great man’s house
a little ahead, for I am not worthy for your majesty should come here.” So
Peter felt as if Christ lowered himself almost in coming to him, as if it were
too good a thing for Christ, too great, too kind, too condescending a thing,
and he seems to say, “Go up higher, Master; sit not down so low as this in my
poor boat in the midst of these poor dumb fishes; sit not down here, for thou
hast a right to sit on the throne of heaven, in the midst of angels that shall
sing thy praises day and night; Lord, do not stop here; go up; take a better
seat, a higher place; sit among more noble beings, who are more worthy to be
blessed with the smiles of thy Majesty.” Don’t you think he meant that? If so,
we may not only excuse his prayer, but even commend it, for we have felt the
same. “Oh!” we have said “does Jesus dwell with a few poor men and women that
have come together in his name to pray? Oh! surely, it is not a good enough
place for him; let him have the whole world, and all the sons of men to sing
his praises; let him have heaven, even the heaven of heavens: let the cherubim
and seraphim be his servants, and archangels loose the latchets of his shoes:
let him rise to the highest throne in glory, and there let him sit down, no
more to wear the thorn-crown, no more to be wounded and despised, and rejected;
but to be worshipped and adored for ever and ever.” I think we have felt so, and,
if so we can understand what Peter felt, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful
man, O Lord.”
Now, brethren and sisters, there are
times when these feelings, if they cannot be commended in ourselves, are yet
excused by our Master, and have a little in them at any rate, which he looks
upon with satisfaction. Shall I mention one?
Sometimes a man is called to an eminent position of usefulness,
and as the vista opens before him, and he sees what he will have to do, and
with what honor his Master will be pleased to load him, it is very natural, and
I think it is almost spiritual for him to shrink and say, “Who am I that I
should be called to such a work as this? My Master, I am willing to serve thee,
but oh! I am not worthy.” Like Moses, who was glad enough to be the Lord’s
servant and yet he said, and he meant it so heartily, “Lord, I am slow of
speech; I am a man of unclean lips, how can I speak for thee?” Or, like Isaiah,
who was rejoiced to say, “Here am I, send me” but who felt, “Woe is me, for I
am a man of uncircumcised lips; how shall I go?” Not like Jonah, who would not
go at all, but must needs go off to Tarshish to escape working at Nineveh; yet
perhaps with a little seasoning of Jonah’s bitters, too, but mainly a sense of
our own unworthiness to be used in so great a service, and we, seem to say,
“Lord, do not put me upon that; after all, I may slip, and dishonor thee; I
would serve thee, but lest by any means I should give way under the strain,
excuse thy servant, and give him a humbler post of service.” Now, I say we must
not pray in that fashion, but still, while there is some evil there, there is a
sediment of good which Christ will perceive, in the fact that we see our own
weakness and our own unsuitableness. He won’t be angry with us, but, riddling
the chaff from the wheat, he will accept what was good in the prayer, and
forgive the ill.
Sometimes, again, dear friends, this
prayer has been almost on our lips in
times of intense enjoyment. Some of you know what I mean, when the Lord
draws near unto his servants, and is like the consuming fire, and we are like
the bush that seemed to be altogether on a blaze with the excessive splendor of
God realized in our souls. Many of God’s saints have at such times fainted. You
remember Mr. Flavel tells us that riding on horseback on a long journey to a
place where he was to preach, he had such a sense of the sweetness of Christ
and the glory of God, that he did not know where he was, and sat on his horse
for two hours together, the horse wisely standing still, and when he came to
himself he found that he had been bleeding freely through the excess of joy,
and as he washed his face in the brook by the roadside he said he felt then
that he knew what it was to sit on the doorstep of heaven, and he could hardly
tell that if he had entered the pearly gates he could have been more happy, for
the joy was excessive. To quote what I have often quoted before, the words of
Mr. Welsh, a famous Scotch divine, who was under one of those blessed deliriums
of heavenly light and rapturous fellowship, and exclaimed, “Hold, Lord! hold.
it is enough! Remember, I am but an earthern vessel, and if thou give me more,
I die!” God does sometimes put his new wine into our poor old bottles; and then
we are half inclined to, say, “Depart, Lord: we are not ready yet for thy
glorious presence.” It does not come to saying that: it does not amount to all
that in words, but still, the spirit is willing, and the flesh is weak, and the
flesh seems to start back from the glory which it cannot bear as yet. There are
many things which Christ would tell unto us, but which he will not, because we
cannot bear them now.
Another time, when this has passed
over the mind, not altogether rightly, not altogether sinfully, like the two
last, is when the sinner is coming to
Christ, and has indeed in a measure believed in him but when at last that
sinner perceives the greatness of the divine mercy, the richness of the
heavenly pardon, the glory of the inheritance which is given to pardoned
sinners. Then many a soul has started back and said, “It is too good to be
true; or if true, it is not true to me.” Well do I remember a staggering fit I
had over that business. I had believed in my Master, and rested in him for some
months, and rejoiced in him, and one day, while reveling in the delights of
being saved, and rejoicing in the doctrines of election, final perseverance,
and eternal glory, it came across my mind, “And all this for you, for such a dead dog as you — how can it be so?” and for awhile it was a
temptation stronger than I could overcome. It was just saying spiritually,
“Depart from me; I am too sinful a man to have thee in my boat, too unworthy to
have such priceless blessings as thou dost bring to me.” Now, that, I say, is
not altogether wrong, and not altogether right. There is a mixture there, and
we may excuse, and somewhat commend, but not altogether. There are other times
in which the same feeling may come across the mind, but I cannot stay now to
specify them. It may be so with some here, and I pray them not to concern
themselves utterly, nor yet to excuse themselves completely, but to go on to
the next teaching of this prayer: —
III. A Prayer That Needs Amending
And Revising.
As it stood it was not a good one:
now, let us put it in a different way, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man,
O Lord.” Would it not be better to say, “Come
nearer to me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord?” It would be a braver prayer,
and a tenderer prayer withal: more wise, and not less humble, for humility
takes many shapes. “I am a sinful man,” here is humility. “Come nearer to me,”
here is faith, which prevents humility from degenerating into unbelief and
despair. Brethren, that would be a good argument, for see: “Since, Lord, I am a
sinner, I need purifying; only thy presence can truly purify, for thou art the
Refiner, and thou dost purify the sons of Levi: only thy presence can cleanse,
for the fan is in thy hand, and thou alone canst purge thy floor. Thou art like
a refiner’s fire, or like fuller’s soap: come nearer to me, then, Lord, for I
am a sinful man, and would not be always sinful; come, wash me from mine
iniquity that I may be clean, and let thy sanctifying fire go through and
through my nature till thou burn out of me everything that is contrary to thy
mind and will “Dare you pray that prayer? It is not natural to pray it; if you
can, I would say to you “Simon Bar-jona, blessed art thou, for flesh and blood
hath not taught thee this.” Flesh and blood may make you say, “Depart from me”;
it is the Holy Ghost alone that, under a sense of sin, can yet put a divine
attraction to you in the purifying fire, and make you long, therefore, that
Christ should come near to you.
Again, “Come near to me, Lord, since
I am a man, and being a man am weak and nothing can make me strong but thy
presence. I am a man, so weak that if thou depart from me, I faint, I fall, I
pine, I die; come near to me, then, O Lord, that by thy strength I may be
encouraged and be fitted for service. If thou depart from me, I can render thee
no service whatever. Can the dead praise thee? Can those with no life in them
give thee glory? Come near me, then, my God, though I am so feeble, and as a
tender parent feeds his child, and the shepherd carries his lambs, so come near
to me.”
Do you not think he might have said,
“Come near to me, Lord, and abide with me, for I am a sinful man,” in the
recollection of how he had failed when Christ was not near? All through that
night he had put the net into the sea with many a splash, and had drawn it up
with many an eager look as he gazed through the moonlight, and there was
nothing that rewarded his toil. In went the net again, and now when Christ
came, and the net was full to bursting, would it not have been a proper prayer,
“Lord, come near to me, and let every time I work I may succeed: and if I be
made a fisher of men, keep nearer to me still, that every time I preach thy
Word, I may bring souls into thy net, and into thy Church that they may be
saved”?
What I want to draw out from the
text — and I shall do so better if I continue bringing out these different
thoughts — is this: that it is well when a sense of our unworthiness leads us,
not to get away from God, in an unbelieving, petulant despair but to get nearer
to God. Now, suppose I am a great sinner. Well, let me seek to get nearer to
God for that very reason, for there is great salvation provided for great
sinners. I am very weak, and unfit for the great service which he has imposed
upon me; let me not, therefore, shun the service or shun my God, but reckon
that the weaker I am the more room there is for God to get the glory. If I were
strong, then God would not use me, because then my strength would get the
praise for it, but my very unfitness and want of ability, and all that I lament
in myself in my Master’s work, is but so much elbow-room for omnipotence to
come and work in. Would it not be a fine thing if we could all say, “I glory
not in my talents, not in my learning, not in my strength, but I glory in
infirmity, because the power of God doth rest upon me; men cannot say, “That is
a learned man, and he wins souls because he is learned”; they cannot say, “That
is a man whose faculties of reasoning are very strong, and whose powers of
argument are clear and he wins sinners by convincing their judgments”; no, they
say, “What is the reason of his success? We cannot discover it; we see nothing
in him different from other men, or perhaps only the difference that he hath
less of gift than they.” Then glory be to God; he has the praise more clearly
and more distinctly, and his head who deserves it wears the crown.
See, then, what I am aiming at with
you, dear brethren and sisters. It is this — do not run away from your Master’s
work, any of you, because you feel unfit, but for that reason do twice as much.
Do not give up praying because you feel you cannot pray, but pray twice as
much, for you want more prayer, and instead of being less with God, be more. Do
not let a sense of unworthiness drive you away. A child should not run away
from its mother at night because it wants washing. Your children do not keep
away from you because they are hungry, nor because they have torn their
clothes, but they come to you just because of their necessities. They come
because they are children, but they come oftener because they are needy
children, because they are sorrowful children. So let every need, let every
pain, let every weakness, let every sorrow, let every sin, drive you to God. Do
not say, “Depart from me.” It is a natural thing that you should say so, and
not a thing altogether to be condemned, but it is a glorious thing, it is a God
honoring thing, it is a wise thing, to say, on the contrary, “Come to me, Lord;
come nearer to me still, for I am a sinful man, and without thy presence I am
utterly undone.”
I shall say no more, but I would
that the Holy Spirit would say this to some who are in this house, that have
long been invited to come and put their trust in Jesus, but always plead as a
reason for not coming, that they are too guilty, or that they are too hardened,
or too something or other. Strange, that what one man makes a reason for
coming, another makes a reason for staying away! David prayed in the Psalms,
“Lord have mercy, and pardon mine iniquity, for it is great.” “Strange
argument,” you will say. It is a grand one. “Lord here is great sin, and there
is something now that is worthy of a great God to deal with. Here is a mountain
sin, Lord, have omnipotent grace to remove it. Lord, here is a towering Alp of
sin; let the floods of thy grace, like Noah’s flood, come twenty cubits over
the top of it. I, the chief of sinners am; here is room for the chief of
Saviours.” How strange it is that some men should make this a reason for
stopping away! This cruel sin of unbelief is cruel to yourselves; you have put away
the comfort you might enjoy. It is cruel to Christ, for there is no pang that
ever wounded him more than that unkind, ungenerous thought, that he is
unwilling. Believe, believe that he never is so glad as when he is clasping his
Ephraim to his breast, as when he is saying, “Thy sins, which are many, are all
forgiven thee.” Trust him. If you could see him, you could not help it. If you
could look into that dear face, and into those dear eyes once red with weeping
over sinners that rejected him, you would say, “Behold, we come to thee; thou
hast the words of eternal life; accept us, for we rest in thee alone; all our
trust on thee is stayed”; and that done, you would find that his coming to you
would be like rain on the mown grass, as the showers that water the earth, and,
through him, your souls should flourish, your sackcloth should be taken away,
and you should be girt about with gladness, and rejoice in him world without
end. The Lord himself bring you to this. Amen.
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "Spurgeon Collection" by:
Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
Box 314
Columbus, New Jersey, USA, 08022
Websites: www.biblebb.com and www.gospelgems.com
Email: tony@biblebb.com
Online since 1986