A Cure for a Weak Heart
(No. 2455)
A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, MARCH 8, 1896.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, MARCH
4, 1886.
"Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, all you that
hope in the LORD." Psalm 31:24.
THERE is no preaching like that which grows out of our own experience.
You perceive, dear Friends, that David had trusted in the Lord. In very
sore and singular trouble God had delivered him and, at the close of
that deliverance, he wrote this Psalm, to be sung by the faithful of
all times and every clime, and then he gave this exhortation which grew
out of his own experience. O my Brothers, we shall never speak to the
heart of our hearers unless what we say has been first engraved on our
own hearts! The best notes of a sermon are those that are written on
our own inner consciousness. If we speak of the things which we have
tasted, and handled, and made our own, we speak with a certainty and
with an authority which God is pleased to use for the comfort of His
people. Think, then, that you can hear David, who has long since fallen
asleep, speaking out of his royal tomb and saying, as the result of his
own happy experience, "Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your
heart, all you that hope in the Lord."
I. In considering this text, I would first of all bid you notice AN
APPROVED COMPANY to whom the Psalmist is speaking–"all you that hope
in the Lord."
We must not regard all parts of the Bible as addressed alike to every
individual. It has many messages to all the sons of Adam, but there are
certain portions of it which are enclosed and belong only to that seed
according to promise which is distinguished by faith, whereby it is
known to be in Covenant with God. Holy Scripture discriminates–it
makes some general promises, but its choicer words are given to persons
of a special character. Judge for yourselves how far you come under the
description of the text, "all you that hope in the Lord."
You perceive, first, that they are men of hope. They have not yet all
they expect to have–they have not yet entered into possession of their
full inheritance. They have a hope which is looking out for something
better than before. They have a living hope which peers into the future
beyond even the dark river of death, a hope with eyes so bright that it
sees things invisible to others, and gazes upon glories which the
unaided human eye has never beheld! Have you this good hope? Do all
your measures lie about you or behind you? If so, the text speaks not
to you–this arrow flies beyond you. If you are, indeed, a child of
God, your hope lies where as yet your eyes do not see, nor your hands
grasp. God's people are a hoping people and, therefore, hoping for the
fulfillment of the promises God has made to them.
Next, they hope for good things. This is implied when the Psalmist
speaks of those that hope in the Lord, for no man hopes for evil things
whose hope is in the Lord! We are not led, by hoping in the Lord, to
hope even for temporal things beyond a certain limit. We hope not for
riches! We hope not for a long continuance here, for we have heard a
voice saying unto us, "This is not your rest, for it is polluted." Our
hope could not, even if it would, content itself with the things which
are seen and temporal–we are hoping for a city whose Builder and Maker
is God! We are hoping for joys which eyes have not seen, nor ears
heard, neither have they entered into the heart of man. We are hoping
for things so good that they can only come from God, Himself! Our hope
about them, therefore, is entirely in Him. Are you a man with this good
hope? Are you a man with a hope that you would not exchange for ten
thousand worlds? Perhaps, out of your box, like Pandora's, everything
that seemed solid has gone–but at the bottom there lies a hope which
does not fly away. This is the bird which sits and sings both day and
night within your soul, even though you are shut up from going into the
common haunts of men. You have a hope, a good hope, a hope of good
things to come in the hereafter, in the islands of the blessed, where
you shall be forever at home with your God!
If you are the persons spoken of in the text, this hope of yours is
rooted, grounded and established in the Lord–"all you that hope in the
Lord." You have not a hope apart from the ever-blessed Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. To the Father you look with the expectation of a child who
is an heir. To the Son of God you look, waiting for that wedding feast
which shall be kept with Him to whom you are affianced by a betrothal
that never can be contravened. To the Holy Spirit you look, for He is
with you even now as the earnest of your inheritance, and you expect
your inheritance to be of the same nature as the earnest which you
already enjoy–and that you will be filled with His light, love, purity
and blessedness. For this you are looking, "My Soul, wait you only upon
God, for my expectation is from Him." Can you say that? We are men of
great expectations, but our expectations are not in men that die, or
men that live–our expectations are in Him who never dies, never fails
and never disappoints those who put their trust in Him. Say, dear
Hearer–I cannot come round and put the question to all of you
individually–but say, Do you belong to this approved company of men
that hope in the Lord?
I may further say that some of them do not get much beyond hope. I
would not condemn them because of this–I must not judge those whom God
has not condemned. I like to hear a child of God speak of the full
assurance of faith, for full assurance is the proper tone of an
educated faith. He that believes ought to be assured of the thing which
he believes– otherwise, why does he believe it? And it is good when
the milk of faith has stood so long that you can see the cream of full
assurance floating upon the surface of it. Yet I know that if you do
not have full assurance and if the most you say is, "I hope," you are
included in the blessed company to whom the Psalmist speaks–"all you
that hope in the Lord." O Little-Faith, Miss Much-Afraid, Mr.
Feeble-Mind and Mr. Fearing–all of you who belong to that very
numerous family, all of you who are like Pharaoh's lean cattle–God
loves you! These feeble ones are carried in the Savior's bosom, or
gently led by His loving hand. Do not exclude yourself, I pray you,
from any sweetness which lies in the text, "all you that hope in the
Lord." Indeed, my text seems to me to have an arm like that of the Good
Shepherd. "He shall gather the lambs with His arm," as if He would put
His arm around them to draw them close up to His heart.
"All you that hope in the Lord"–you who are so little, you who are so
useless, you who are so trembling, you who are not what you want to be,
you who can see your own imperfections rather than anything else, you
who groan rather than sing because you cannot as yet overcome your
besetting sins–do you hope in the Lord? My text speaks to all that
hope in the Lord and I should like so to preach from it that if I
should omit any of you who are strong, I should, at any rate, apply the
text to those who are very weak and trembling! "All you that hope in
the Lord." This passage picks up the undermost. It seems to come like
the men with the ambulance, to look after the wounded and carry them on
at the same pace as those who march in the fullness of their strength!
This, then, is the approved company–"all you that hope in the Lord."
Not, "you that hope in yourselves." Not, "you that hope in your
priests." Not, "you that have any confidences anywhere else"–but you
who hope in God alone!
II. Well now, secondly, my text seems to intimate that there is AN
OCCASIONAL WEAKNESS–I might say, A FREQUENT WEAKNESS which is apparent
in many of those that hope in the Lord.
It is a dangerous weakness, for it is a weakness of the heart. The text
says, "Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart." Wherein
it is implied that sometimes the heart of them that hope in the Lord
grows weak. As you well know, heart disease is a very dangerous
disease–even if a very little is wrong with the heart, it is a serious
matter– for every other part of the body will be affected. Some of
God's own people are occasionally and, many of them very often, subject
to a weakness of the heart. They lose their courage, their joy departs
from them and they become timorous and fearful.
This weakness occurs on many occasions. Sometimes we have seen those
who hope in the Lord very weak in heart under great suffering. Pain
follows pain–it seems as if every cut of the knife went deeper than
the last and that the knife was sharper every time. Oh, let me tell you
who are in vigorous health, have no bodily pain and do not always
sympathize as you might with those who are the subjects of acute
suffering–it is not as easy as you think to bear such pain as some of
us have to endure! Let a man have an intolerable headache by the week,
together, or it may be a sharp attack of rheumatism. Let sciatica come
upon him or some of those terrible nerve pains that touch us to the
very quick and you will see whether he who boasted of his strength
finds that he has any strength to spare! At such times the spirits sink
and the heart's action grows feebler and feebler.
So is it, also, in the battle of life. A man is struggling hard to gain
a livelihood. Perhaps he has not any means of earning even bread for
his wife and children. It is very trying for a man when the cupboard is
bare and the children's clothes scarcely cover them from the cold. In
such circumstances his heart sometimes fails him and then it is that
God bids him be of good courage and strengthens his heart.
This weakness of heart is particularly felt in times of temptation. I
have known Christian men who have had to work among ungodly companions
and their spirits have been vexed every day with the filthy
conversation of the wicked–and their taunts, and jeers, and
blasphemies! And in such cases the heart has oftentimes grown very
heavy, sick and faint. Those of us who love the old-fashioned Gospel
cannot look abroad, today, and see so many pulpits turned against our
God and many so-called "thinkers" deserting the old faith, without
feeling that this is a burden which presses upon us very sorely. And
our heart grows heavy and, perhaps, becomes weak.
I have also seen some Christians troubled with this complaint in the
midst of great labor for the Lord. They are doing all they can do and
yet they do not see the success they expected. They are not weary of
the work, but they are weary in it. They see very clearly the
imperfections in their service and they are further troubled because
some who should help them, do not. They meet with cold hearts where
they reckoned on enthusiasm! Instead of generosity, it may be that
there is stinginess and, instead of prayerfulness burning like coals of
juniper, there is lukewarmness or spiritual death. At such times the
man of God puts his hand on his bosom and he says, "My heart, my heart
fails me." Then the message of the text comes in, "Be of good courage,
and He shall strengthen your heart, all you that hope in the Lord."
Most men are subject to fainting fits at times. Even David became weak
and faint. And Samson, after he had cried exultingly, "With the jawbone
of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass, have I slain a
thousand men," yet, for lack of a drink of water, was ready to lie down
and faint and die! The best of men are but men at the best and,
therefore, who wonders if their heart sometimes fails them in the day
of suffering, in the hour of battle, or under the broiling sun when
they are laboring for their Lord?
If this weakness of the heart should continue, it will be very
injurious. At the present time, I believe that it restricts enterprise.
That young man would go as a missionary to China, but his heart fails
him. There is another who would be found in the Congo, seeking to
preach Christ, but he has not the needed courage. There is a Sister who
would be taking a Bible class, or visiting in the district where she
lives, but she cannot summon the resolution to begin. Oh, how many good
resolves and holy projects never come to anything! We see the bud and
blossom, but they do not knit into fruit as they ought to! I hardly
dare to think of the vast quantity of talent in the Redeemer's Kingdom
that lies unused, often for lack of moral courage and confidence in
God! I do not think that we are at all lacking in confidence in
ourselves–at any rate, some of us are not–but it is confidence in God
which is needed–and that is quite another thing. This confidence makes
the feeble strong and the timid brave–may we all have a large share of
it! God deliver us from faintness of heart lest we injure the Kingdom
of our Lord by withholding our service!
And, dear Friends, this weakness of heart endangers the success of the
best worker. He who fights most valiantly may be on the verge of
victory and yet be defeated if his heart should then fail him. I have
no doubt, in reading the records of many campaigns, you, too, must have
noticed that men have gone on from victory to victory and suddenly
there has been a pause because their hearts failed them just when, had
they followed up their previous successes, they would have swept all
before them! Beware, you who have served God with courage, lest fear
should take hold upon you and you should flinch in the day of battle
and miss that which you might have won for your Lord!
This feeble heart pleads many excuses. I do not marvel that it
does–how can I, when I know myself? O Brothers, Sisters, if you look
within, well may your hearts fail you! And if you look without, upon
the temptations that waylay you, upon the powers of darkness so
strongly entrenched within their fortresses, well may you faint! What a
task we undertake in trying to win a single soul, much more in seeking
to win a city or the world for Christ! Well may our hearts fail if we
begin to look away from God. The fable is told of Hercules, that he
fought with a famous giant whom he could not, for a while, overcome
because he was born of the earth and every time he was hurled to his
mother, earth, he rose renewed in strength. Hercules tugged and strove
with his gigantic foe and felt that the struggle was hopeless, till he
discovered his adversary's secret–then he took him in his arms and
hugged the monster to death!
You and I are invincible though a thousand stronger than Hercules
should be against us–as long as we can fall back on our God! And the
only hope of the enemy's victory is if he can keep us away from God.
But even if he should throw us down and seem to break us in pieces, yet
in that fall we fall upon our God and rest on Him, alone. We may lie
prone upon the earth and cry, "Rejoice not against me, O my enemy: when
I fall, I shall arise." Come into contact with your God, fall upon
Divine power and you will rise with new force and new strength! But, if
you should once be separated from Him, then it would be all over with
you. Yet, blessed be His name, nothing shall be able to separate us
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!
III. Now, thirdly, I call your most earnest heed to the trumpet voice
of the exhortation in the text, A SEASONABLE EXHORTATION–"Be of good
courage, and He shall strengthen your heart."
I like the way this is put. It is not alone, "Be of good courage."
There is an, "and" with it–"and He shall strengthen your heart." At
the same time, the exhortation is not omitted. It does not say, "He
shall comfort your heart, therefore you need do nothing." They err from
the Scriptures who make the Grace of God a reason for doing nothing–it
is the reason for doing everything! They who say that predestination
and the working of a living God put man out of the field, make a gross
mistake–it is these facts that bring man into the field. The most
stern predestination is not the least in conflict with the most perfect
freedom of the human will. I may not be able to explain how it is so to
you, but I know that it is so as a matter of fact–and that God
requires us to be of good courage at the same moment that He says that
He will strengthen our heart.
Dear Friends, if you want to get out of diffidence, timidity and
despondency, you must wake yourselves up. This is incumbent upon you,
for the text puts it so–"Be of good courage." Do not sit still, rub
your eyes and say, "I cannot help it, I must always be dull like this."
You must not be so! In the name of God, you are commanded in the text
to "be of good courage." If you are indolent like that, you must not
expect the Grace of God to operate upon you as though you were a block
of wood and could be made into something against your will. Oh, no! You
must determine to be of good courage. Therefore, arise, and shake
yourself from the dust. Believe, dear Friend! Put your trust in God.
"Give to the winds your fears." Take down your harp from the willows.
"I cannot play it," you say. Get it down, all the same–even if you
cannot play it, lay your fingers upon the strings–it is wonderful how,
when once those accustomed fingers touch the well-beloved strings, it
seems as if they were charmed into music. Do what you can and God will
do for you what you can by no means do for yourself!
I know that a great many who are very sad and low in spirit come in
here on a Thursday night–and their friends say to them, "We wish that
we could cheer you up." I do not say that, but I do say this, "Be of
good courage. Be of good courage!" It is the Lord's command to you. Do
you not think that your God deserves to be trusted? What has He ever
done that you should doubt Him? Does He not deserve your most confident
faith? And what do you expect to get out of your timidity? He that is
afraid of the weather–can he change it? He says that there will be a
long frost–can he shorten it a single day by fretting over it? There
is great depression in business and he will be ruined–will he be less
likely to be ruined by worrying? Don't you see, then, that your God
deserves your trust and that common wisdom bids you be of good courage?
If you are not of good courage, what will happen to you? I will not say
that you will be a coward, but I will say that you will look very much
like one. I have heard of one who said that he was of a very retiring
disposition–he could not take a Sunday school class, or speak a word
to anybody for the Master, he was so retiring! I have also heard of a
soldier who, in the day of battle, was so very retiring that they shot
him as a deserter! I would not have you deserve the coward's doom and
speak of it as, "retiring." No, get not into that class–be you rather
like that soldier of Alexander who was always to the front–and the
reason was that he bore about with him what was thought to be an
incurable disease and he suffered so much pain that he did not care
whether he lived or died! Alexander took great pains to have him healed
and when he was quite well, he never exposed his precious life to any
risk, again! Oh, I would rather that you should be stung into courage
by excessive pain than that you should be healed into cowardice! Christ
ought not to be served by featherbed soldiers! He deserves that we
trust Him and bring ourselves into His service with a courage that
cannot be daunted. Though it is upon the pikes of His adversaries, let
us find Paradise there, for we shall find it if we follow Christ
faithfully to the death! God grant us, then, to be of good courage!
Why are you afraid? Is God with you and yet are you afraid? What ails
you? Has God forsaken you? Has He forgotten to be gracious? Has
Omnipotence grown weak? Has He been a wilderness to you? Has the manna
ceased to fall, or the waters to flow? Go, yield yourself up to Him!
Ask Him, by His Grace, to make you heroic instead of being numbered
among the fearful and the unbelieving who turn their backs in the day
of battle and seek their own selfish ease and comfort.
IV. I finish up with A CHEERING PROMISE–"He shall strengthen your
heart."
God, alone, can strengthen the heart. I suppose that physicians can do
something for weak hearts, though I do not know. As a general rule,
when a man dies suddenly and they do not know what it is that killed
him, they say, "It is disease of the heart." The heart is a mysterious
portion of our being and needs great care. Spiritually, the mercy is
that God, who made the heart, understands the heart and He who sees its
weakness, knows how to strengthen it!
How does God strengthen men's hearts? Well, sometimes, by gracious
Providences. Something very unexpected happens. I have, myself, learned
to expect the unexpected. I have known what it is to almost wish on
purpose to get into a situation in which there was no way of escape,
that I might see the Lord cleave the hills asunder, or divide even the
sea to make a way for His people! It is a grand thing to get into such
deep water that you cannot touch the bottom and must swim–and then to
feel the eternal buoyancy of God's Providence bearing you up! It is
grand swimming when there are ten thousand fathoms of ocean below
you–there is no fear of knocking your foot against a rock, then, and
when you get right out into a simple dependence upon the living God and
feel the waves of His eternal influences round about you– then will
you be happy and blessed!
The Lord also has a way of strengthening men's hearts by the kindly
fellowship of friends. Paul was often much refreshed by Christian
associates. The Lord can send someone who, "as iron sharpens iron," may
sharpen you and make you ready for service. "A word fitly spoken"–"a
word upon wheels," as the Hebrew has it–how good it is when it comes
in just at the right time! It "is like apples of gold in baskets of
silver." Such are goodly words brought to us by men of faith and
experience whom God sends to us.
So, too, have I known a man's heart to be mightily strengthened by a
precious promise. Who knows the wonderful power of a text of Scripture?
We used to have, 30 years ago–I do not know whether you have them
now–"poor men's plasters" which we used when we felt weak in the
back–but a promise out of the Scripture is a poor man's plaster,
indeed! What strength it gives to the loins! How we seem to be braced
up when we truly lay hold of a promise of God and it really gets a grip
upon our spirit!
Beside all that, God the Holy Spirit has a secret way of strengthening
the courage of God's people which none of us can explain. Have you ever
felt it? You may have gone to your bed, sick at heart, "weary, and
worn, and sad," and you wake in the morning ready for anything! Perhaps
in the middle of the night you awake and the visitations of God are
manifested to you–and you feel as happy as if everything went the way
you would like it to go. No, you shall be more happy that everything
should cross you than that everything should please you if it is God's
sweet will! You feel a sudden strengthening of your spirit, so that you
are perfectly resigned, satisfied, prepared and ready. I have known a
man of God in a tight spot. Everything has seemed to be going wrong and
he has got worried and troubled till he has stepped aside and retired
for a little prayer to his God. He has not been absent five minutes yet
he has come back feeling, "Now I am ready for you." All the flurry has
gone, all the worry has gone–God has revived his spirit and
strengthened his heart!
I have seen a good woman when her husband has just died and all her
hope has seemed withered. The first burst of grief has passed and she
has bowed by the side of that bed, lifted up her heart to God and then
has brushed her tears away and given herself up to fight the battle of
life for her children–and God has strengthened her heart as in a
moment! Oh, do not give up! You need not be cowards! Do not give up. Do
not say, "I am beaten. I will always be despondent. My life is
crushed." You need not be so! "Be of good courage, and He shall
strengthen your heart." Get to your chambers, fall upon your knees,
pour out your heart before God! Tell your trouble to the Most High and,
as the Lord lives, before whom I stand, He must and will help those who
put their trust in Him! Has he ever failed any who trusted in Him? Who
has ever stopped His hand, or withdrawn Him from His designs? Who has
ever made Him deny His promise, or retract His word? If you will trust
Him, He will be better to you than your fears! No, better to you than
your beliefs, or your largest hopes! Stay yourselves upon Him! Lean
upon the bosom of eternal Love! Lean hard, lean all your weight there
and leave that weight there, and the Lord be with you and bless you!
Blessed are all they that trust in the Lord.
How I wish that all here had trusted in the Lord, or that they would
seek Him, even now, if they have never yet found Him! The Lord be
gracious to each of you, for Jesus' sake! Amen.
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM31.
Verse 1. In You, O LORD, do I put my trust. Can we say as much as that?
However else this Psalm of David may end, it strikes a grand keynote,
that which should be the first indication of our spiritual
life–confidence in God. Here is an ancient weather-beaten saint who,
in the very midst of the storm, can say, "In You, O Jehovah, do I put
my trust." There will the anchor of his soul find a sure hold!
1. Let me never be ashamed. "How can You let me be put to shame after
having trusted in You, O my God? I shall be ashamed if You forsake me,
if Your promises are not kept to me, O my Lord! Therefore, 'let me
never be ashamed.'"
1. Deliver me in Your righteousness. David dares to appeal even to the
faithfulness, truth and justice of Jehovah, that He should keep the
promise upon which His servant had placed his trust.
2. Bow down Your ear to me. "I am very weak, I am also very
unworthy–it will be a great instance of Your Divine condescension if
You hear me–yet I cry unto You, 'Bow down Your ear to me.'"
2. Deliver me speedily. We may not set the time for God to answer our
petitions, yet may we expect that His sure mercies will be swift
mercies when our necessities are very urgent. So the Psalmist pleads,
"Lord, come not late to me, lest You come too late to me, for I am in
sore distress! My case is urgent, therefore help me now, 'deliver me
speedily.'"
2. Be You my strong rock, an house of defense to save me. He remembered
Adullam and Engedi and he worked these places into his supplication. A
man's prayer should be the index of his life's history. The scenes to
which he has been most accustomed should rise up vividly before his
spirit when he is at the Throne of Grace. It was so with David–"My
God, be You an immutable, immovable, impregnable rock to me and let me
dwell in You. Be not merely a refuge for the moment, but be 'a house of
defense to save me.'"
3. For You are my rock and my fortress; therefore for Your name's sake
lead me, and guide me. David is of a logical turn of mind. Notice the,
"therefore," in this verse. What an amazing, "for," there is here! "Be
You my strong rock," "for You are my rock." What God is already, we may
ask Him to be! What we believe Him to be by faith, we may ask Him to be
in our experience. Observe that David's appeal is not in any degree to
his own merit, but. "for Your name's sake"–"because I trust in Your
name, and if You do not do as You have said, Your great name will
suffer dishonor. How can I believe in Your veracity if You do not do
for me according to Your promise and Covenant? 'Therefore, for Your
name's sake, lead me.' 'Guide me,' too, even when I do not think of
Your Presence. Lead me like a child and guide me like a traveler."
There are shades of meaning, here, so that there is no redundancy of
expression in the words, "Lead me, and guide me." But even if the two
words meant the same, it would be quite lawful for the Psalmist to
repeat the prayer, since he felt his need of leading and guiding to be
so great. "Lord, I am so foolish, and the way is so difficult,
'therefore, for Your name's sake, lead me, and guide me.'"
4. Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me: for You
are my strength. "Lord, my enemies have entangled me! Before I was
aware of it, I was taken in the meshes of their net–will You not pull
me out, O Lord? It will need a strong pull, but then, 'You are my
strength.' 'Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me:
for You are my strength.'" Sometimes our strength is crippled and we
are baffled by the net in which we are enclosed. We feel ourselves
hampered. We cannot use the strength we have, but God's strength is
always available. There seems to me to be a very blessed turn in the
expression here used–"Pull me out of the net: for You are my
strength."
5. Into Your hands I commit my spirit. You notice that this Psalm [31]
is dedicated to the chief musician. I have studied these Psalms, not
only by the hour, and by the day, but sometimes by the month, together.
Some of these Psalms have been the pillow for my head at night. Others
of them, like wafers made of honey, have lain in my mouth till I have
sucked out of them their Divine sweetness. I have often noticed that
when one of these sacred songs is dedicated to the chief musician, The
Chief Musician generally appears somewhere in the Psalm–He from whom
comes all the music that ever makes bleeding hearts, glad, usually
shows some traces of Himself within the Psalm itself! In this instance,
the living words of David were the dying words of David's Lord–"Into
Your hands I commend My spirit." What David did and what the Lord Jesus
Christ did, let us do, and do it every day–let us commit our spirit
into the hands of our God.
5, 6. You have redeemed me, O LORD God of Truth, I have hated them that
regard lying vanities: but I trust in the LORD. Men are sure to have
some kind of trust or other on which they rely. In David's day some
trusted to false gods, others relied upon their own strength. The
Psalmist does not speak in soft tones concerning these people, but he
says, "I
could not bear them. 'I have hated them that regard lying vanities.' I
would not come into their secret, or have any connection with them. I
was astonished at them, that they should turn away from God! But as for
myself, 'I trust in Jehovah.'" Look how he comes back to the note with
which he started–"In You, O Jehovah, do I put my trust"–and now he
repeats it, "I trust in Jehovah." It is an unfashionable thing–many
will not do it–yet David says, "I trust in Jehovah," as if he dared to
stand alone and did not mind how singular he seemed to be.
7. I will be glad and rejoice in Your mercy. What a grand faith! Should
there not, sometimes, be the sounding of the cymbals even in the midst
of our supplications? Though we must often put on sackcloth, yet we
must lift up our song of praise whenever we can–"'I will be glad and
rejoice'–there shall be a reduplication of my delight–'I will be glad
and rejoice in Your mercy.'"
7. For You have considered my trouble. "You did not send it without due
consideration. You weighed it and now You look upon me and You study my
trouble, You know all about it." You know what is meant by human
consideration, but how wonderful must Divine consideration be! When a
single glance suffices for Jehovah to know all that is transpiring in
the whole universe, what must His consideration be! "You have
considered my trouble."
7. You have known my soul in adversities. "When others did not know me,
You did. You were familiar with me and sympathetic towards me,
especially in the day of adversity. 'You have known my soul.'" God
knows His own children even when they are in rags and when their faces
are stained with tears, and their spirits are depressed almost to
despair– "You have known my soul in adversities."
8. And have not shut me up into the hand of the enemy. "No. I may get
into the enemy's prison, but there is no bar to it. 'You have not shut
me up.' I may seem to get into my enemy's hand, but he cannot shut that
hand." Truly, it must be so because David had already put his soul into
the hands of God–"Into Your hands I commit my spirit." How, then,
could he be shut up in the hands of the enemy?
8. You have set my feet in a large room–
"Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage."
Wherever the child of God is when his faith is in active exercise, his
feet are in a large room–by faith he walks at liberty!
9. Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am in trouble. In this short
sentence of four words–"I am in trouble"– David gives the text of
which the next few verses are a kind of sermon with divisions and
subdivisions.
9. My eyes are consumed with grief. "My eyes seem burnt up with
scalding tears." The salt of our tears wears out the very strength of
our life. "My eyes are consumed with grief."–
9. Yes, my soul and my belly. Or, "body." The inward part of my being
seems washed away with the deluge of my tears."
10. For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing. Better
spend them in sighing than in sinning! Yet it is a sad case when we
seem to measure our days by the bars of our grief.
10. My strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones are
consumed. Now he sees to the bottom of his sorrow– "My strength fails
because of my iniquity." We can bear those sorrows which have no
connection with our sins, but, alas, where are they to be found? It may
be that David's great sin seemed to him to lie at the very root of all
his grief.
11. I was a reproach among all my enemies. They had found something to
fling at him and they were delighted to throw it with all their
malicious force! "I was a reproach among all my enemies"–
11. But especially among my neighbors. Those that are nearest can stab
the sharpest. Those who knew David the best endeavored to find some
silly tale to use against him.
11. And a fear to my acquaintance: they that did see me outside, fled
from me. This Psalm may have been written after Absalom's rebellion,
when Shimei cursed the king, and when everybody seemed to be forsaking
him. Then was David brought into a low estate, indeed.
12. I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken
vessel. This was the same David who slew the Philistine giant! This was
the great deliverer of his country, yet the people had forgotten all
that. Earthly popularity is the most fleeting thing under Heaven. The
world is a hard and cruel master–it forgets its servants when they
grow old–it has nothing good to say of them when there is nothing
further to be got out of them. So David laments, "I am like a broken
vessel"–a potsherd that can hold nothing and is flung away upon a
dunghill.
13. For I have heard the slander of many. To have one slanderer
attacking your character is bad enough, but to have many such cruel
enemies about you–to have a whole brood of Hell's hornets, as it were,
stinging you–oh, what misery is this! You who, happily, have never
experienced this torture, cannot imagine what agony it causes. I hope
you may never know it.
13, 14. Fear was on every side: while they took counsel together
against me, they devised to take away my life. But I trusted in You, O
LORD. Here he is back on the old Rock, and rejoicing as his feet stand
once more on this firm foundation–"I trusted in you, O Jehovah."
14, 16. I said, You are my God. My times are in Your hand. "My enemies
cannot do anything against me without Your permission." Divine
Providence is a downy pillow for an aching head, a blessed salve for
the sharpest pain. He who can feel that his times are in the hand of
God need not tremble at anything that is in the hand of man!
15, 16. Deliver me from the hand of my enemies, and from them that
persecute me. Make Your face to shine upon Your servant: save me for
Your mercies' sake. "If Your face shines upon me, Lord, they may look
as black as they please. If You will but deliver me, I care not how
cruelly they persecute me. If You will save me, who can destroy me?" O
you who are in trouble at this time, hasten to your God! Where should
the little bird fly when pursued by the hawk, but to its shelter in the
rock? Where can you go, O sheep of Christ's flock, but to your
Shepherd?
17. Let me not be ashamed, O LORD; for I have called upon You: let the
wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave. There is
something of the harshness of the old dispensation about that prayer,
so we will turn it into a prophecy and say, "The wicked shall be
ashamed–they shall be silent in the grave."
18. 19. Let the lying lips be put to silence, which speak grievous
things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous. Oh how great
is Your goodness which You have laid up for them that fear You. Is not
that a blessed expression to be used by the man who said that his life
was spent with grief and his years with sighing?
19. Which You have worked for them that trust in You before the sons of
men! Not only has the Lord abundant goodness stored up for His
children, but His goodness is brought out for others to see and for His
people to feed upon even in the presence of their enemies!
20. You shall hide them in the secret of Your Presence from the pride
of man: You shall keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of
tongues. They shall not be wounded by all the malice of their
adversaries–they shall be preserved in the King's royal pavilion.
21-23. Blessed be the LORD for He has showed me His marvelous kindness
in a strong city. For I said in my haste, I am cut offfrom before Your
eyes: nevertheless You heard the voice of my supplications when I cried
unto You. O love the LORD, all you His saints. See what a fountain of
happiness there is in the Psalmist's heart? He longs for all the saints
to love the
Lord!
23, 24. For the LORD preserves the faithful, and plentifully rewards
the proud doer. Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart,
all you that hope in the LORD. In this Psalm we have heard the wail of
the sackbut and the clashing of the cymbals–but we finish with the
blast of the silver trumpets!