Lesson 57: Prayer in Harmony with the Destiny of Man, part 1
Matthew 22:20 - And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?”
Genesis 1:26 - Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...”
“Whose is this image?” It was by this question that Jesus foiled His enemies when they thought to take Him, and settled the matter of duty in regard to the tribute. The question and the principle it involves are of universal application. Nowhere more truly than in man himself. The image he bears decides his destiny. Bearing God’s image, he belongs to God: prayer to God is what he was created for. Prayer is part of the wondrous likeness he bears to His Divine original; of the deep mystery of the fellowship of love in which the Three-One has His blessedness, prayer is the earthly image and likeness.
The more we meditate on what prayer is, and the wonderful power with God which it has, the more we feel constrained to ask who and what man is, that such a place in God’s counsels should have been allotted to him. Sin has so degraded him that from what he is now we can form no conception of what he was meant to be. We must turn back to God’s own record of man’s creation to discover there what God’s purpose was, and what the capacities were with which man was endowed for the fulfilment of that purpose.
Man’s destiny appears clearly from God’s language at creation. It was to fill, to subdue, to have dominion over the earth and all in it. All the three expressions show us that man was meant, as God’s representative, to hold rule here on earth. As God’s representative, he was to fill God’s place: himself subject to God, he was to keep all else in subjection to Him. It was the will of God that all that was to be done on earth should be done through him: the history of the earth was to be entirely in his hands.
In accordance with such a destiny was the position he was to occupy, and the power at his disposal. When an earthly sovereign sends a representative to a distant province, it is understood that he advises as to the policy to be adopted, and that that advice is acted on: that he is at liberty to apply for troops and the other means needed for carrying out the policy or maintaining the dignity of the empire. If his policy is not approved, he is recalled to make way for someone who better understands his sovereign’s desires and as long as he is trusted, his advice is carried out. As God’s representative man was to have ruled; all was to have been done under his will and rule. On his advice and at his request heaven was to have bestowed its blessing on earth. His prayer was to have been the wonderful, though simple and most natural, channel in which the intercourse between the King in heaven and His faithful servant man, as lord of this world, was to have been maintained. The destinies of the world were given into the power of the wishes, the will, the prayer of man.
Prayer: Lord, what is man, that You are mindful of him? and the son of man, that You visit him? For You made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him to have dominion over the work of Your hands. You put all things under his feet. Oh Lord our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth!