A Fear to Be Desired
(No. 2801)
A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, OCTOBER 19, 1902.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
NOVEMBER 7, 1878.
"They shall fear the LORD and His goodness in the latter days." Hosea
3:5.
THIS passage refers, in the first place, to the Jews. If we read the
whole verse and the preceding one, we shall see that they describe the
present sad condition of God's ancient people and inspire us with hope
concerning their future–"For the children of Israel shall abide many
days without a king or prince, without sacrifice, without ephod or
teraphim. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the
Lord their God and David their king. They shall fear the Lord and His
goodness in the latter days." From this and many other texts of
Scripture, we may conclude, without a shadow of a doubt, that the Jews
shall, one day, acknowledge Jesus to be their King. The Son of
David–who is here, doubtless, called by the name of David, and who,
when He died upon the Cross, had Pilate's declaration inscribed over
His head, "This is Jesus the King of the Jews"–will then be
acknowledged by them as their King and then shall they be restored to
more than their former joy and glory. God has great things in store for
the seed of Abraham in the latter days. He has not finally cast them
away and He will be true to that Covenant which He made with their
fathers–and on Judaea's plains shall roam a happy people who shall
lift up their songs of praise unto Jehovah in the name of Jesus Christ
their Lord and Savior! Whenever that shall happen, we, or those who
will then be living, may know that the latter days have fully come
because it is foretold here and in other passages that this is what
will occur in the latter days. I am not going to attempt any
explanation of the prophetic intimations concerning the future, but
this one fact is plain enough–when the end of the world is approaching
and the fullness of the Gentiles is gathered in, and all the splendor
of the latter days has really commenced, then "shall the children of
Israel return, and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They
shall fear the Lord and His goodness."
On this occasion I intend only to call your attention to this
expression, "They shall fear the Lord and His goodness," for what
Israel will do, in a state of Divine Grace, is precisely what all
spiritual Israelites do when the Grace of God rests upon them. The fear
of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, fills the heart and the
goodness of the Lord becomes the source and fountain of that fear in
the hearts of all those whom the Lord has blessed with His Grace. So I
shall, first of all, ask you to notice a distinction which is to be
observed. Secondly, a Grace which is to be cultivatedand then, thirdly,
a sin which is to be repented of in the case of many.
I. First, then, here is A DISTINCTION TO BE OBSERVED.
Human language is necessarily imperfect. Since man's fall and
especially since the confusion of tongues at Babel, there has not only
been a difference in speech between one nation and another, but also
between one individual and another. We probably do not all mean exactly
the same thing by any one word that we use–there is just a shade of
difference between your meaning and mine. The confusion of tongues went
much further than we sometimes realize and so completely did it confuse
our language that we do not, on all occasions, mean quite the same
thing to ourselves even when we use the same word. Hence, "fear," is a
word which has a very wide range of meaning. There is a kind of fear
which is to be shunned and avoided–that fear which perfect love casts
out–because it has torment. But there is another sort of fear which
has in it the very essence of love and, without which there would be no
joy even in the Presence of God! Instead of perfect love casting out
this fear, perfect love nourishes and cherishes it and, by communion
with it, derives
strength from it. Between the fear of a slave and the fear of a child,
we can all perceive a great distinction. Between the fear of God's
great power and justice which the devils have–and that fear which a
child of God has when he walks in the Light with his God, there is as
much difference, surely, as between Hell and Heaven!
In the verse from which our text is taken, that difference is clearly
indicated–"Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the
Lord their God and David their king. They shall fear the Lord"– so
that this fear is connected with seeking the Lord. It is a fear which
draws them towards God and makes them search for Him. You know how the
fear of the ungodly influences them–it makes them afraid of God, so
they say, "Where shall we flee from His Presence?" If they could, they
would take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost part of
the earth if they had any hope that God could not reach them there! At
the last, when this fear will take full possession of them, they will
call upon the rocks and the hills to hide them from the face of Him who
will then sit upon the Throne of God, whose wrath they will have such
cause to dread! The fear of God, as it exists in unrenewed men, is a
force which always drives them further and yet further away from God.
They never get any rest of mind until they have ceased to think of
Him–if a thought of God should, perchance, steal into their mind, fear
at once lays hold upon them again–and that fear urges them to flee
from God.
But the fear mentioned in our text draws to God! The man who has this
fear in his heart cannot live without seeking God's face, confessing
his guilt before Him and receiving pardon from Him. He seeks God
because of this fear. Just as Noah, "moved with fear," built the ark
wherein he and his household were saved, so do these men, "moved with
fear," draw near unto God and seek to find salvation through His love
and Grace. Always notice this distinction and observe that the fear
which drives anyone away from God is a vice and a sin–but the fear
that draws us towards God, as with silken bonds, is a virtue to be
cultivated!
This appears even more clearly in the Hebrew, for they who best
understand that language tell us that this passage should be read thus,
"They shall fear toward the Lord, and towardHis goodness." This fear
leans toward the Lord. When you really know God, you shall be thrice
happy if you run toward Him, falling down before Him, worshipping Him
with bowed head, yet glad heart–all the while fearing towardHim, not
away from Him! Blessed is the man whose heart is filled with that holy
fear which inclines his steps in the way of God's commandments,
inclines his heart to seek after God and inclines his whole soul to
enter into fellowship with God that he may be acquainted with Him and
be at peace.
It is also worthy of notice that this fear is connected with the
Messiah. "They shall seek the Lord their God and David their King"–who
stands here as the type of Jesus, the Messiah, the King of Israel. And
further on it is said, "They shall fear the Lord and His goodness." And
I should not do wrong if I were to say that Christ is Jehovah's
goodness– that, in His blessed Person, you have all the goodness,
mercy and Grace of God condensed and concentrated. "In Him dwells all
the fullness of the Godhead bodily." So that fear which is a sign of
Grace in the heart–that fear which we ought all to seek after–always
links itself to Christ Jesus! If you fear God and know not that there
is Mediator between God and men, you will never think of approaching
Him. God is a consuming fire–then how can you draw near to Him apart
from Christ? If you fear God and know not of Christ's Atonement, how
can you approach Him? Without faith, it is impossible to please
God–and without the blood of Jesus there is no way of access to the
Divine Mercy Seat. If you know not Christ, you will never come to God!
Your fear must link itself with the goodness of God as displayed in the
Person of His dear Son, or else it cannot be that seekingfear, that
fear toward the Lordof which our text speaks. It will be a fleeing
fear, a fear that will drive you further and yet further away from God
into greater and deeper darkness–into dire destruction–in fact, into
that Pit whose bottomless abyss swallows up all hope, all rest and all
joy forever!
II. Let this distinction be kept in mind and then we may safely go on
to consider, in the second place, THE GRACE WHICH IS TO BE
CULTIVATED–"They shall fear the Lord and His goodness."
We will divide the one thought into two and, first, I will speak about
that fear of God which is the work of the Holy Spirit–a token of
Grace, a sign of salvation and a precious treasure to be always kept in
the heart.
What is this fear of God? I answer, first, it is a sense of awe of His
greatness. Have you ever felt this sacred awe stealing insensibly over
your spirit–hushing and calming you–and bowing you down before the
Lord? It will come, sometimes, in the consideration of the great works
of Nature. Gazing upon the vast expanse of waters–looking up to the
innumerable stars, examining the wing of an insect and seeing there the
matchless skill of God displayed in the minute. Or standing in a
thunderstorm, watching as best you can, the flashes of lightning and
listening to the thunder of Jeho-
vah's voice–have you not often shrunk into yourself and said, "Great
God, how awesome You are!"–not afraid, but full of delight, like a
child who rejoices to see his father's wealth, his father's wisdom, his
father's power–happy and at home, but feeling oh, so little? We are
less than nothing, we are all but annihilated in the Presence of the
great eternal, infinite, invisible All-in-All. Gracious men often come
into this state of mind and heart by watching the works of God and so
they do when they observe what He does in Providence. Dr. Watts truly
sings–
"Here He exalts neglected worms
To scepters and a crown–
And on the following page He turns,
And treads the monarch down." The mightiest kings and princes are but
as grasshoppers in His sight! "The nations are as a drop in a bucket
and are counted as the small dust of the balance," that has not weight
enough to turn the scale. We talk about the greatness of mankind, but
"all nations before Him are as nothing and they are counted to Him less
than nothing, and vanity." Again Dr. Watts wisely sings–
"Great God! How infinite are Thee! What worthless worms are we!"
When we realize this, we are filled with a holy awe as we think of
God's greatness and the result of that is that we are moved to fall
before Him in reverent adoration!
We turn to the Word of God and there we see further proofs of His
greatness in all His merciful arrangements for the salvation of
sinners–and especially in the matchless redemption worked out by His
well-beloved Son, every part of which is full of the Divine Glory. And
as we gaze upon that Glory with exceeding joy, we shrink to nothing
before the Eternal–and the result is once again lowly adoration. We
bow down and adore and worship the living God with a joyful, tender
fear which both lays us low and lifts us very high, for never do we
seem to be nearer to Heaven's golden Throne than when our spirit gives
itself up to worship Him whom it does not see, but in whose realized
Presence it trembles with sacred delight!
It is the same fear, but looked at from another point of view, which
has regard to the holiness of God. What a holy Being is the great
Jehovah of Hosts! There is no fault in Him, no deficiency, no
redundancy. He is whole and, therefore, holy. There is nothing there
but Himself, the wholly perfect God. "Holy! Holy! Holy! is a fit note
for the mysterious living creatures to sound out before His Throne
above, for, all along He has acted according to the principle of
unsullied holiness. Though blasphemers have tried, many times, to–
"Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod, Rejudge His judgments,
be the god of God," they have always failed and still He sits in the
lonely majesty of His absolute perfection, while they, like brute
beasts, crouch far beneath Him and despise what they cannot comprehend!
But to a believing heart, God is all purity. His Light is "as the color
of the terrible crystal," of which Ezekiel writes. His brightness is so
great that no man can approach it. We are so sinful that when we get
even a glimpse of the Divine Holiness, we are filled with fear and we
cry with Job, "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear: but now
my eyes see You. Therefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and
ashes." This is a kind of fear which we have need to cultivate, for it
leads to repentance and confession of sin, to aspirations after
holiness and to the utter rejection of all self-complacency and
self-conceit. God grant that we may be completely delivered from all
those forms of pride and evil!
The fear of God also takes another form, that is, the fear of His
Fatherhood, which leads us to reverence Him. When Divine Grace has
given us the new birth, we recognize that we have entered into a fresh
relationship towards God– namely that we have become His sons and
daughters. Then we realize that we have received "the Spirit of
adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." Now, we cannot truly cry unto
God, "Abba, Father," without, at the same time, feeling, "Behold, what
manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be
called the sons of God." When we recognize that we are "heirs of God
and joint-heirs with Christ," children of the Highest, adopted into the
family of the Eternal, Himself, we feel at once, as the spirit of
childhood works within us, that we both love and fear our great Father
in Heaven who has loved us with an everlasting love and has "begotten
us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that
fades not away."
In this childlike fear there is not an atom of that fear which
signifies being afraid. We who believe in Jesus are not afraid of our
Father–God forbid that we ever should be! The nearer we can get to
Him, the happier we are. Our highest wish is to be forever with Him and
to be lost in Him. But, still, we pray that we may not grieve Him. We
beseech Him to keep us from turning aside from Him. We ask for His
tender pity towards our infirmities and plead with Him to forgive us
and to deal graciously with us for His dear Son's sake. As loving
children we feel a holy awe and reverence as we realize our
relationship to Him who is our Father in Heaven–a clear, loving,
tender, pitiful Father–yet our Heavenly Father who "is greatly to be
feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all
them that are about Him."
This holy fear takes a further form when our fear of God's Sovereignty
leads us to obey Him as our King, for He, to whom we pray and in whom
we trust, is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and we gladly acknowledge
His Sovereignty. We see Him sitting upon a Throne which is dependent
upon no human or angelic power to sustain it. The kings of the earth
must ask their fellow men to march in their ranks in order to sustain
their rules, but our King "sits on no precarious throne, nor borrows
leave to be" a king! As the Creator of all things and all beings, He
has a right to the obedience of the entire creature He has made. Again
I say that we who believe in Jesus are not afraid of God even as our
King, for He has made us, also, to be kings and priests, and we are to
reign with Him, through Jesus Christ, forever and ever!
Yet we tremble before Him lest we should be rebellious against Him in
the slightest degree. With a childlike fear we are afraid lest one
revolting thought or one treacherous wish should ever come into our
mind or heart to stain our absolute loyalty to Him. Horror takes hold
upon us when we hear others deny that "the Lord reigns"–and even the
thought that we should ever do this grieves us exceedingly–and we are
filled with that holy fear which moves us to obey every command of our
gracious King so far as we know it to be His command. Having this fear
of God before our eyes, we cry to those who would tempt us to sin, "How
can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" It is not because
we are afraid of Him, but because we delightin Him, that we fear before
Him with an obedient, reverential fear! And, Beloved, I do firmly
believe that when this kind of fear of God works itself out to the
fullest, it crystallizes into love. So excellent, so glorious, so
altogether everything that could be desired, so far above our highest
thought or wish, are You, O Jehovah, that we lie before You and shrink
into nothing! Yet, even as we do so, we feel another sensation
springing up within us. We feel that we love You and, as we decrease in
our own estimation of ourselves, we feel that we love You more and
more. As we realize our own nothingness, we are more than ever
conscious of the greatness of our God! "Your heart shall fear and be
enlarged," says the Prophet Isaiah, and so it comes to pass with us.
The more we fear the Lord, the more we love Him, until this becomes to
us the true fear of God–to love Him with all our heart, and mind, and
soul, and strength. May He bring us to this blessed climax by the
effectual working of His Holy Spirit!
Now I want to dwell, with somewhat of emphasis, upon the second part of
this fear–"They shall fear the Lord and His goodness." It may, at
first, seem to some people a strange thing that we should fear God's
goodness–but there are some of us who know exactly what this
expression means, for we have often experienced just what it describes.
How can we fear God's goodness? I speak what I have often felt and I
believe many of you can do the same as you look back upon the goodness
of God to you–saving you from sin and making you to be His child–and
as you think of all His goodness to you in the dispensations of His
Providence. You may, perhaps, be like Jacob who left his father's house
with his wallet and his staff–and when he came back with a family that
formed two bands and with abundance of all that he could desire, he
must have been astonished at what God had done for him! And when David
sat upon his throne in Jerusalem, surrounded by wealth and splendor, as
he recollected how he had fed his flock in the wilderness and
afterwards had been hunted, by Saul, like a partridge upon the
mountains, he might well say, "Is this the manner of man, O Lord God?"
In this way, God's goodness often fills us with amazement–and
amazement has in it an element of fear. We are astonished at the Lord's
gracious dealings with us and we say to Him, "Why have You been so good
to me for so many years and in such multitude of ways? Why have You
manifested so much mercy and tenderness toward me? You have treated me
as if I had never grieved or offended You. You have been as good to me
as if I had deserved great blessings at Your hands. Had You paid me
wages, like a hired servant, You would never have given me such
sweetness and such love as You have now lavished upon me, though I was
once a prodigal and wandered far from You. O God, Your love is like the
sun–I cannot gaze upon it–its brightness would blind my eyes! I fear
because of Your goodness."
Do you know, dear Friends, what this expression means? If a sense of
God's goodness comes upon you in all its force, you will feel that God
is wonderfully great to have been so good to you. Most of us have had
friends who have become
tired of us after a while. Possibly we have had some very kind friends
who are not yet tired of us, but, still, they have failed us, every now
and then, in some points–either their power could not meet our need,
or they were not willing to do what we needed. But our God has poured
out His mercy for us like a river! It has flowed on without a break.
These many years He has continued to bless us and has heaped up His
mercies, mountain upon mountain, until it has seemed as though He would
reach the very stars with the lofty pinnacles of His love! What shall
we say to all this? Shall we not fear Him, adore Him and bless Him for
all the goodness that He has made to pass before us? And, all the
while, feel that even to kiss the hem of His garment, or to be beneath
His footstool is too great an honor for us?
Then there will come upon us, when we are truly grateful to God for His
goodness toward us, a sense of our own responsibility and we shall say,
"What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me?" We
shall feel that we cannot render to Him anything compared with what we
ought to render–and there will come upon us this fear–that we shall
never be able to live at all consistently with the high position which
His Grace has given to us. As God said concerning His ancient people,
we shall fear and tremble for all the goodness and for all the
prosperity that He has procured for us. It will seem as though He had
set us on the top of a high mountain and had bid us walk along that
lofty ridge–it is a ridge of favor and privilege, but it is so
elevated that we fear lest our brain should reel and our feet should
slip because of the height of God's mercy to us! Have you ever felt
like that, Beloved? If God has greatly exalted you with His favor and
love, I am sure you must have felt like that many a time.
Then, next, this holy fear is near akin to gratitude. The fear of a man
who really knows the love and goodness of God will be somewhat of this
kind. He will fear lest he should really be, or should seem to be,
ungrateful. "What," he asks, "can I do? I am drowned in mercy. It is
not as though my ship were sailing in a sea of mercy–I have been so
loaded with the favor of the Lord that my vessel has gone right down
and the ocean of God's love and mercy has rolled right over the
masthead. What can I do, O Lord? If You had given me only a little
mercy, I might have done something in return to express my gratitude.
But, oh, Your great mercy in electing me, in redeeming me, in
converting me, in preserving me and in all the goodness of Your
Providence toward me–what can I do in return for all these favors? I
feel struck dumb and I am afraid lest I should have a dumb heart as
well as a dumb tongue! I fear lest I should grieve You by anything that
looks like ingratitude."
Then the child of God begins, next, to fear lest he should become
proud, "for," he says, "I have noticed that when God thus favors some
men, they begin to exalt themselves and to think that they are persons
of great importance. So, if the Lord makes the stream of my life flow
very joyously, I may imagine that it is because there is some good
thing in me and be foolish enough to begin to ascribe the glory of it
to myself!" A true saint often trembles concerning this matter.
Sometimes he is even afraid of his mercies! He knows that his trials
and troubles never did him any hurt, but he perceives that, sometimes,
God's goodness has intoxicated him as with sweet wine, so he begins to
be almost afraid of the goodness of his God to him. He thinks to
himself, "Shall I be unworthy of all this favor and walk in a way that
is inconsistent with it?" He looks a little ahead and he knows that the
flesh is frail and that good men have often been found in very slippery
places, and he says, "What if, after all this, I should be a
backslider? You, O Lord, have brought me into the banqueting house and
Your banner over me is love. You have stayed me with flagons, and
comforted me with apples. You have laid bare Your very heart to me and
made me know that I am a man greatly beloved! Shall I, after all this,
ever turn aside from You? Will the ungodly ever point at me and say,
Aha! Aha! Is this the man after God's own heart? Is this the disciple
who said he would die rather than deny his Master?" Such a fear as that
very properly comes over us at times–and then we tremble because of
all the goodness which God has made to pass before us.
I think you can see, dear Friends, without my needing to enlarge
further upon this point, that while a time of sorrow and suffering is
often, to the Christian, a time of confidence in his God, on the other
hand, a time of prosperity is to the wise man, a time of holy fear. Not
that he is ungrateful, but he is afraid that he may be. Not that he is
proud–he is truly humble because he is afraid lest he should become
proud. Not that he loves the things of the world, but he is afraid lest
his heart should get away from God–and so he fears because of all the
Lord's goodness to him. May the Lord always keep us in that state of
fear, for it is a healthy condition for us to be in! Those who walk so
very proudly and with too great confidence are generally the ones who
first tumble down. My observation and experience have taught me this.
When I have met with anyone who knew that he was a very good man and
who boasted to other people that he was a very
good man–he has generally proved to be like some of those pears that
we sometimes see in the shop–very handsome to look at, but sleepy and
rotten all through!
Then, on the other hand, I have noticed a great many other people who
have always been afraid that they would go wrong and who have trembled
and feared at almost every step they took. They have feared lest they
should grieve the Lord and they have cried to Him, day and night,
"Lord, uphold us!" And He has done so and they have been enabled to
keep their garments unspotted to their life's end. So, my prayer is
that I may never cease to feel this holy fear before God and that I may
never get to fancy, for a moment, that there is, or ever can be,
anything in me to cause me to boast or to glory in myself. May God save
all of us from that evil! And the more we receive of His goodness, the
more may we fear, with childlike fear, in His Presence!
III. Now I must close with just a few words upon the last point which
is, A SIN TO BE REPENTED OF.
I cannot help fearing that I am addressing some to whom my text does
not apply except by way of contrast. Are there not some of you, who are
unsaved, and yet who do not fear God? O Sirs, may the Holy Spirit make
you to fear and tremble before Him! You have cause enough to fear. If
you live all day long without even thinking of God, or if, when you do
think of Him, you try to smother the thought at once–if you say that
you can get on very well without Him and that life is happy enough
without religion–I could weep for you because you do not weep for
yourselves! You say, "We are rich," yet, all the while, you are
wretched, miserable and poor. Your poverty is all the worse because you
fancy that you are rich. You are also blind. That is bad enough, yet
you say, "We can see." It is doubly sad when the spiritually blind
declare that they can see–for they will never ask for the sacred
eye-salve, or go to the great Oculist who can open blind eyes–as long
as they are satisfied with their present condition. It is a great pity
that many unconverted men do not fear God even with a servile fear. If
they would only begin with that, it might prove to be the lowest rung
of the heavenly ladder and lead on to the blessed fear which is the
portion of the children of God!
There are others of you, I am afraid, who never fear either God or His
goodness. How I wish you would do so, for the Lord has been very good
to you. You were saved at sea after you had been wrecked. You were
raised up from fever when others died. You have prospered in business,
on the whole, though you have had some struggles. Blessed with children
and made happy in your home–all this you owe to the God whom you have
never acknowledged! The goodness of God to some ungodly men is truly
amazing! I think, when they sit down at night, when everybody else has
gone to bed, and remember how they began life with scarcely a shilling
to bless themselves with, yet God has multiplied their substance and
given them much to rejoice in–I think their hearts ought to be full of
gratitude towards their Benefactor. I would like all such people to
remember what God said by the mouth of the prophet Hosea, "She did not
know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver
and gold, which they prepared for Baal. Therefore will I return and
take away my corn in the time thereof, and my wine in the season
thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax given to cover her
nakedness." Take care, O you ungrateful souls, that the Lord does not
begin to strip you of the mercies which you have failed to appreciate!
I pray that you may be led to confess from where all these blessings
came and to cry, "My Father, You shall be my Guide henceforth and
forever. Since You have dealt so lovingly and tenderly with me, I will
come and confess my sin to You and trust in Your dear Son as my Savior
and Friend, that I may henceforth be led and commanded by You, alone,
and may fear before You all the days of my life."
May God grant to everyone of us the Grace to believe in Jesus, to rest
in Him and then to walk in the fear of the Lord all our days, for
Christ's sake! Amen.
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM103.
Verse 1. Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless
His holy name. We ought to be always blessing God. This sacred
employment should be like an atmosphere surrounding us at all times.
Yet there are special seasons when we feel as if we must wake ourselves
up and brace ourselves up for some special adoration, talking to
ourselves as the Psalmist does here.
2. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits. Alas,
that forgetfulness of God's benefits is an evil kind of worm that eats
into the very heart of our praise. Oh, for a retentive memory
concerning the loving kindness of the
Lord! Come, my heart, you have been thinking of many things while you
have been away from the House of Prayer. Now forget them! Perhaps you
have even dwelt upon your sorrows and remembered the wormwood and the
gall. If so, now let those sad memories vanish, "and forget not all His
benefits."
3. Who forgives all your iniquities. What a great, "all," that is! From
your childhood until now you have been full of iniquities–and the Lord
has been equally full of forgiveness.
3. Who heals all your diseases. There is no other physician like
He–and all human physicians, whatever skill they may possess–derive
it from Him! Blessed be the healing God!
4. Who redeems your life from destruction. Else had you, long ago, gone
down into the Pit! But redemption has kept you out of it. Your natural
life and your spiritual life have both been preserved to you through
the precious blood of Christ.
4. Who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies. We talk
about crowned heads. There are many such here in this assembly. Let
everyone whose head is crowned "with loving kindness and tender
mercies" magnify the name of the crowning Lord!
5. Who satisfies your mouth with good things; so that your youth is
renewed like the eagles. You were down on the ground lately, with all
your feathers shed, but they have grown again and you are up on the
wing once more. Your youth has been given back to you! Renew, then,
your praises of your God. With the dew of your youth restored to you,
let the dew of your gratitude also abound. Who would not bless the Lord
when he knows the blessedness of pardoned sin, a wounded spirit,
healed, the life redeemed from destruction, youth restored like the
eagle's and the whole being crowned with loving kindness and tender
mercies?
6. The LORD executes righteousness and judgment for all that are
oppressed. Therefore let the oppressed praise Him! Let the justice
which adorns His Throne be the subject of our constant delight. There
is no act of oppression, on the part of the great ones of the earth, at
which He will wink–"The Lord executes righteousness and judgment for
all that are oppressed."
7. He made known His ways unto Moses, His acts unto the children of
Israel Bless Him for having thus revealed Himself, giving us His Holy
Word in which we see Him as in a mirror. When God makes Himself known
to His people, then is the time for them to praise Him! You can
scarcely worship an unknown God, but when He makes Himself known by
special revelation in your heart, then you must and you will praise
Him.
8. The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in
mercy. Therefore again praise Him. All who know and love the Lord
should form a great orchestra continually magnifying His holy name!
9. He will not always chide: neither will He keep His anger forever. So
that if you are just now being chided by Him–if you have some
consciousness of His anger–begin to bless Him that it will not last
long! "He will not always chide." Behold the rainbow painted on the
storm cloud and bless the name of the Lord even while you are under His
afflicting hand.
10. He has not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according
to our iniquities. Therefore praise Him again and again. Had He dealt
with us as we deserve, we should not have been here. But we are still
here, on praying ground, and on pleading terms with the Most High!
Therefore let us praise Him.
11. For as the Heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy
toward them that fear Him. Such great mercy as this should have the
highest praise of which we are capable. This verse speaks of the height
of God's mercy–the next one tells of its breadth.
12. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our
transgressions from us. They are gone–never to return! It is
impossible that they should be imputed against us any more forever!
Therefore praise Him to the very utmost.
13. Like as a father pities his children, so the LORD pities them that
fear Him. Notice that as this sacred song rises, it gets more tender.
If it is not quite so jubilant, the praise is all the deeper and quite
as thrilling. One of the sweetest thoughts that we can have concerning
God is that which relates to His fatherly tenderness toward His
children.
14. For He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust Let His name
be praised for this! Dust must be handled daintily, lest it should
resolve itself into its separate particles–and God thus delicately
handles us.
15, 16. As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so
he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone; and the
place thereof shall know it no more. Yet does God think of us, even as
He does of the grass–and as He gives to each blade of grass its own
drop of dew, so do we seem to feel hanging about each one of us a
glistening drop of mercy, for which let us praise His holy name as the
sunlight of His favor sparkles in every drop of His loving kindness!
17, 18. But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting
upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children's
children; to such as keep His covenant, and to those that remember His
commandments to do them. Then, surely, we must bless God for His favor
to our posterity, for His loving kindness, not only to ourselves, but
also to our children, and our children's children! As we look back, we
praise the God of our fathers and as we look forward, we praise the God
of our children's children!
19. The LORD has prepared His throne in Heavens and His kingdom rules
over all For which again let us say, "Hallelujah!" The Lord of Hosts is
no dethroned monarch! He has not lost His power to govern all whom He
has made! "His kingdom rules over all."
20. Bless the LORD, you His angels that excel in strength, that do His
commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word. Magnify Him more
than ever, if that is possible, you mighty hosts who–
"Day without night
Circle His Throne rejoicing."
21. 22. Bless you the LORD, all you His hosts; you ministers of His,
that do His pleasure. Bless the LORD, all His works in all places of
His dominion: bless the LORD, O my soul The praise is now spread
widely, over all the universe! Yet, O my heart, do not forget your own
personal note in it–"O Bless the Lord, O my soul."