“Hiding in You!”

"Hiding in You!"

(No. 2930)

A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1905.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
DECEMBER 14, 1876.

"I flee unto You to hide me." Psalm 143:9.

WHAT a great mercy it is for us that David had not a smooth path and an
easy life! We would have lost much valuable instruction if he had been
able to hold on continually the even tenor of his way. Whereas, now, we
are great gainers by his trials and sufferings. In reading the Psalms
of David, you will often find a verse which just suits your own case.
It is hardly possible for you to be placed in any position without
discovering that the son of Jesse has been there before you. I cannot,
in all respects, liken him to the Lord Jesus Christ, who was in all
points tempted like as we are, yet, to a large extent, it was so with
David as well as with "great David's greater Son." He seems to have
been not merely one man, but "all mankind's epitome," and to have known
almost all human temptations, human sins and human joys, having been
led, sometimes by the Spirit, and sometimes, alas, by his own frailty
and foolishness, into all sorts of strange places in order that he
might become an instructor to us.

You have probably heard this remark a great many times, but, did it
ever strike you that very much the same may be said concerning your own
experience? When you are wondering why you are so strangely tried and
why your experience is often so remarkable, may it not happen that the
reason does not lie in yourself so much as in others to whom God means
to make you useful? You are being led along a rough road and being
tried and instructed in order that you may be the means of helping
others whom you will find in some of the dark places of the earth. You
are being trained as a hardy mountaineer in order that when the Lord's
sheep are lost on wild craggy places, you may know how to climb up
after them and bring them down to a place of safety. You are being
taught how to find your way through the country of despondency and
despair in order that when the pilgrims to the Celestial City lose
their way and get into the marshy places of fear and doubt, you may
know how to bring them out again and set their feet again upon the Rock
and establish their goings once more.

The bearing of any one man's life upon the lives of other men can
scarcely be fully known to us here. Even when we are able to look upon
the completed life, we shall hardly know how much it has been
intertwisted with other men's lives and, certainly, until the life is
completed, no man can know how much his present sufferings have to do
with his usefulness to others. Nor can he fully understand how he is
being prepared here, there, and in a thousand other places for
usefulness in a position of which he little dreams that he will ever be
the occupant. Yet he is one day to be placed where all this mysterious
training will be of the utmost service to other people. The steel blade
that was put into the fire again, and again, and yet again to be
tempered, did not know that the Cid would use it in the day of battle
to cut through the armor of his adversaries! If it had not been
prepared for use in this fashion, it would not have been fit to be
placed in such a hero's hands. Believers are being made into vessels
meet for the Master's use and it is not every vessel that is fit for
Him to employ in His Divine service. David was prepared, but he could
only have become so by means of the remarkable life of trial through
which he was called to pass.

Whenever we read the story of David's life, or note in the Psalms where
he went and what he did, we should not merely notice how David acted
and suffered and what he did while undergoing the suffering, but we
should try to so study his experience as to be able to do as he did if
we are placed in circumstances similar to his. Avoid his sin–let that
be a beacon to warn you–but imitate his virtues. Pray the Lord to make
you a partaker of the fullest measure of the Grace which the Psalmist
possessed, but never look at his life as you gaze at a statue–merely
to admire it and to say how

beautifully it is worked–but look at it as a boy should look at his
copy, that he may imitate it. Look at it as the soldier looks at his
leader, that he may march step by step as he sets him the example and,
above all things, always keep your eyes on David's Lord and Master,
lest even David should be the means of misleading you! Let your
admiration both of David and of the Lord Jesus Christ be
practical–there is far too much of that kind of religion which
consists in merely admiring other people, or in seeing what we,
ourselves, ought to be, or in regretting that we are not what we should
be–true godliness is manifested as we bring forth the fruit of the
Spirit by being and doing that which we feel we ought to be and to do.
To this end, gracious Spirit, be pleased to help us! Let us give to our
text that sort of meditation which shall all the while be aiming at a
practical result–and while we see how David fled to his God in the
time of trial, let us each one, also, make this resolve, in the
strength of the Holy Spirit–"I will do the same as David did. I will
flee unto God to hide me."

In our text we have David's declaration to the Lord, "I flee unto You
to hide me." We also ought to do as David did, but no man will do this
unless he has the five things of which I am about to speak.

I. And, first, no man will ever flee to God to hide him unless he has A
SENSE OF DANGER.

David was in danger from many cruel enemies and he fled to God to hide
him from them. You and I may not be in any such danger as that,
physically. We live in a country where, happily, we are protected from
such a danger as that–at least, the most of us do–but there are other
dangers to which we are exposed. David fled to God to hide him because
he realized the danger in which he was placed and we shall only flee to
the Lord to hide us when we realize our own personal peril.

We are all well aware that many persons have perished because they have
not realized their danger. You know how often this is the case. Men
have gone, without any thought of peril, into places where there have
been pestilential odors or the seeds of deadly diseases. If they had
known what was there, they would not have gone in that direction, or
they would have taken various precautions to guard themselves from
infection. But, in ignorance of their peril, they have breathed the
fatal air and have gone home to sicken and die. Many a gallant ship has
struck upon a hidden reef, or upon a sandbank that was not marked on
the chart. I have never heard of any vessel being wrecked through its
officers keeping too good a look-out. Nor do we often read of ships
being lost because the captain was too anxious to keep far away from
the treacherous sands and the dangerous headlands. But we often hear of
wrecks which have occurred through the captain's ignorance of the
danger to which his vessel was exposed. Every now and then we learn
that some obstruction has been encountered upon the railway as the
express train has came rushing along. If the driver had but known that
the permanent way, as it is called, was out of order and that there
would be a collision if he did not stop the train, he would have done
all that he could to avoid such a calamity–but because he did not know
that he and his passengers were in danger, he went on as though all had
been well–and the most terrible consequences ensued.

Many have perished–I am using the word, "perish," in the ordinary
sense–because they have not known that they were in danger. And we
know (oh, that it were not so!) that concerning spiritual things, there
are millions of our fellow countrymen who are in danger of the eternal
wrath of God, yet they are not conscious that it is so. They know that
they are living in sin and they have some dim perception that sin is an
evil thing in God's sight, yet they are not fully conscious of what sin
is. Many of them do not know, in the full meaning of the word, that
they are sinners. See how contented they are with their fancied
righteousness, conceiving themselves to be in perfect safety–and all
the while they are in the utmost peril! They eat and they drink. They
are married and they are given in marriage as though such a state of
things would last forever. Talk to them concerning the last dread
conflagration which is to consume the world and they will laugh you to
scorn, and cry, "Peace and safety," even though sudden destruction is
coming upon them! If we could once make men realize that they are in
danger, there would be some hope that they would seek to escape from
the peril that threatens them! But we cannot make them believe in its
reality and certainty. They are unbelieving with regard to such
disturbing news. If we cried aloud to them, "Peace, peace," although we
know there is no peace for them as long as they continue as they now
are, they would probably believe us, for they lend their credulous ears
to any superstition that seems to promise them a false peace. But if we
try to warn them of their danger–danger of the most terrible
kind–they will not, as a rule, be persuaded to listen to such
unwelcome tidings–or if they do listen, they do not believe our
message and they will not admit they are in danger.

If any such persons are present with us here–and I fear that there are
some–I mean those who have no sense of danger and yet have never
trusted in Christ for salvation, let me remind you, dear Friends, that
your sins must inevitably bring punishment upon you! There is a Judge
of all the earth who must do right–and every transgression of His
righteous Law must be followed by punishment, otherwise why should
there be a Judge of the earth at all if He is indifferent to the
iniquities of man? Let me also remind you that your sin is holding you
in its power and though, at present, you may not indulge in the grosser
forms of vice, you are in great danger of going much further into paths
of sin than you like to think you will. You cannot stop in an evil
course just when and where you please. You cannot say to sin, "Thus far
shall you go and no further." The beginnings of evil are like the
letting out of water–and when the dyke is once broken and the pent-up
flood is set free–it soon deluges the fields and, perhaps, sweeps away
multitudes of men and their habitations as well. Oh, that men could but
realize that while they are living in sin, they are always in danger of
committing more sin, and yet more sin–going on from bad to worse and
from worse to the very worst of all!

Many a young man would shudder with horror if he could foresee what he
will yet become unless the Grace of God shall prevent it. You have
often seen that familiar picture of the child and the kind of man that
he will yet become– either drunken or sober. If that child should be
told that, one day, he would be like that red-faced old drunkard, he
would not believe that he could ever grow to be as bad as that! Neither
will most young men who are now living in sin, believe that they can
ever grow to be what they will be if they continue in their present
course. Yet that is the danger to which they are continually
exposed–the danger of sin always producing yet more sin–and, to my
mind, it seems to be punishment of a most grievous kind even if there
were no other, that sin should be allowed to breed within itself
something yet more black and foul and filthy than it is itself! So foul
that on the cancer of sin there comes yet another and another, more
foul and loathsome, and yet another, and another, and another until the
man who was possessed with one devil becomes possessed with seven
devils even more wicked than the first one was! There is this real
danger, this grievous danger, in the case of every unconverted man or
woman upon the face of the earth! Therefore each one of them should cry
unto the Lord, "I flee unto You to hide me."

No man ever flees to God for shelter until he realizes that he is in
danger, yet all men, whether they are the children of God or the
children of this world, are in danger of one kind or another. As for
the men of this world–the children of disobedience–they are in danger
of the punishment which is due on account of their present sin and that
awful growth of sin of which I have been speaking. But are the children
of God also in danger? Ask them and they will tell you that they are
pilgrims to the Celestial City which they will, in due time, reach by
God's Grace. But they will also tell you that all along the road to
Heaven, there are dangerous places where the traveler might fall to his
very grievous hurt–for instance, the descent in the Valley of
Humiliation, with Apollyon waiting there, determined to slay, or at
least to wound the pilgrim! Or the Valley of the Shadow of Death, a
little further on, with its miry bog and its hobgoblins and all manner
of terrifying sights and sounds. And then the Enchanted Ground with its
temptation to the pilgrim to sleep. And Vanity Fair, where there are
all sorts of ill wares to allure and deceive the pilgrim. Dangers of
every sort beset the followers of the Lamb–and they are only safe as
they are Divinely protected. The moment you become a Christian, you
are–

"Safe in the anas of Jesus,"

as far as your ultimate and final perseverance is concerned, but all
the while you are on the road to Heaven you must wear the armor
provided for the good soldiers of Jesus Christ, for you are always
exposed to danger from the adversary's arrows and sword. All the while
that you are in the earthly pastures, you need the protection of the
good Shepherd. Why? Because you are in danger from the roaring lion who
goes about seeking whom he may destroy and unless the Great Shepherd's
rod and staff protect you, you will certainly be destroyed!

Let me also remind you that some dangers are not readily perceived and
those are generally the worst of all. We may be able to keep clear of
"the arrow that flies by day," but who can guard himself against "the
pestilence that walks in darkness"? Possibly we do not fall into open
sin, but the dry rot of gradual declension–the silent sliding away of
the heart from Christ–who but God can guard us against that? Many a
man is caught in the invisible nets of Satan and well-near destroyed
even while he dreams that he is safely pursuing the path that leads to
Heaven! Therefore do I sound the alarm and ring the bell again and
again to remind you that we are all in danger, though some think they
are not! Those who think they are not are the very persons who are in
the greatest danger of all because they think they are not in peril. I
wish I had the power to awaken all of you to a true sense of your
danger with regard to spiritual things, for then you would, like David,
flee to God to hide you. You never will do that until you realize the
peril in which you are placed and recognize that as long as you are not
abiding in Christ, you are in continual peril and that your only safety
lies in fleeing to God to hide you, even as the Psalmist did long ago.

II. The second great need of a man in order that he may flee to God to
hide him is A SENSE OF WEAKNESS. A man who thinks that he can fight his
own battles in his own strength will not flee to God to hide him. But
we are, all of us, as weak as water if we are left to ourselves and we
soon show that we are quite unable to cope with our spiritual foes. The
unforgiven sinner proves how weak he is by yielding at once to the
tempter. He has a traitor within his own heart who opens the gates to
Satan and so he is easily overcome. The Believer, though he has within
him the new life which hates sin, is as weak as other men if he is left
without the Spirit of God for a single moment. There is enough of the
fire of Hell in you, my Brother–you who are the most spiritual and
most like Christ–to set all Hell aright again if the infernal fires
were ever put out! You are inclined toward that which is good, but if
the Grace of God ever left you, you would be quite as much inclined
toward that which is evil! I will not quite say what Ralph Erskine said
concerning himself–

"On good and evil equal bent And both a devil and saint"–

but I will say that if a saint could ever be left of God, he would soon
become a devil. And he who was so eager after that which was good,
would be just as eager after that which is evil. So again I say that we
are, all of us, as weak as water if left to ourselves.

But some people think that they are very strong. Hear how the boastful
man says, "I can drink my glass of beer or wine, but I shall never
become a drunkard. I can attend the theater and see what a low standard
of morals prevails there, but I shall never fall into such an evil
thing as fornication or adultery! I shall never became a blasphemer! I
am not in the habit of even using coarse language and it is quite
impossible that I should become profane." He thinks, when he stakes his
small sums of money, that he will never become a gambler. "No," he
says, "I am not such a fool as that." Yet, often, when a man says that,
you may write his true name in large capital letters–"A FOOL"–for
there is no other fool who is so foolish as the one who thinks he is
not such a fool as other men are!

When Hazael was told by Elisha what he would afterwards do, he
exclaimed, "Is your servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?"
Ah, Brothers and Sisters, we are all sadly weak and those are the
weakest of all who think themselves to be strong! Past failures ought
to have taught us all how great is our weakness. I wonder if any of you
ever tried to soar away into the clouds with the perfectionists who
delight to go up in a balloon and seek to live far above all ordinary
mortals? If so and if you are at all like me–and I expect your flesh
and blood are very similar to mine–I imagine that you soon discovered
your mistake. The very day that you thought your temper was perfect,
you found that it was very imperfect! And at the very time that you
intended to have no thought or care, and when you had made up your mind
that you were not coming down again to the level of this poor groveling
world, you found that you could not rise an inch above the ground and
that you were, as far as spiritual things were concerned, just like a
lump of lead! You were made to feel that the best of men are but men at
the best and, in that way, your failure taught you how weak you are.
Even if you are the best man or woman in the world, in yourself you are
utter weakness–only Christ Himself can make anything of you! Saint as
you are, you are still a sinner saved by Grace and you are only holy as
you are made so by the blessed Spirit who sanctifies you! If you were
left by Him for a single moment, your sinnership would come to the
front all too prominently and your saintship would retire to the rear.

Now, Brothers and Sisters, in our weakness lies our strength. The
Apostle Paul says, "When I am weak, then am I strong." And I wish it
were possible for me to produce in all of you, whether you are sinners
or saints, the sense of positive inability and utter weakness, for,
until you feel that, you will never say to the Lord, "I flee unto You
to hide me." On the contrary, you will stand out boldly in the place of
danger and you will even defy your foes to do their worst against you!
You will venture into worldliness. You will go up to the very mouth of
the furnace of sin. You will become more daring and more presumptuous
and you will be less on your watchtower–you will keep on going further
and further in the wrong way as long as you imaging that you are
strong. But if the Lord will aim His arrows right at the very heart of
your strength and lay all your fancied glory in the mire and make you
to know that you are less than the

least of all saints, then it will be better for you. But before you
will reach this point, you will have to confess your own nothingness
and say–

"But, oh, for this no strength have I! My strength is at Your feet to
lie."

Then you will flee to the Lord to hide you, and then you will be hidden
by Him in a safe place–but never till then.

III. A third thing which we must all have before we are likely to use
the language of the text with truth is A PRUDENT FORESIGHT–"I flee
unto You to hide me."

The ungodly man and, in a measure, also the unwise Believer, will
perceive the peril in which he is placed and yet hesitate, linger,
delay, deliberate, procrastinate. This is great folly, yet it is just
what thousands are doing. I feel sure that some of you who are here are
not prepared to live–much less are you prepared to die. I am glad to
see you come to the House of God on a weeknight, for it looks as if you
had some desire to find out the way of Everlasting Life. Yet how many
there are among you who are living as if this life were all! You are
quite unprepared for that great day to which you all know you are
hastening and you do not like to even hear anything about death and the
judgment to come because you are utterly unfit to face those stern
realities. Are you always going to put off thoughts about these
all-important matters and to go on living without the slightest
preparation for eternity? You know that you are in danger and that you
are too weak to face that danger all alone though you have not yet
fully perceived how great your weakness is. Oh, that you would be wise
enough to begin to look about you for a way of escape! When you are in
this sense, wise, you will flee to God to hide you–but until you do
get at least a little of this sacred prudence and some of the wisdom
which the Holy Spirit teaches, you will delay, and delay, and delay,
till, on some dread day, the long-gathering clouds will discharge the
awful storm of Divine Judgment upon your devoted head! And then you
will not be able to flee to Christ to hide you, for the harvest will be
past and the summer will be ended–but you will be "not saved."

The Lord, by His Grace, has made Christian men and women more full of
forethought than the ungodly are. And they have desired to escape from
the wrath to come and they have done so. And let me tell you, Sinner,
you who have not yet fled to Christ for salvation, that while it is a
blessed thing to be delivered from the wrath to come, it is also a most
delightful thing to be delivered from the fear of it even now! I do not
think that I could live an hour without being in the bitterest agony if
I had any sort of doubt about my safety in Christ Jesus, for I have a
most vivid sense of my danger and my weakness apart from Him and these,
like wings, bear me to the Rock of Ages where I can hide in absolute
security. But I could never rest in peace if I thought that God was
angry with me, or if I knew that if I were to drop down dead, my soul
would be in Hell! How can any of you remain unconcerned in such a sad
condition as that? Surely it must be because you do not realize what
your true condition is!

If I could lock some of you up in a room and make you think about your
position with regard to God, you would be very uncomfortable. You would
almost as soon go to prison as sit down to think about the needs of
your immortal spirit. Yet it is wrong for a man to be afraid to look
into the books in which he keeps his soul's accounts! It is worse than
foolish to be afraid to test the soundness of the foundation of the
house in which he dwells! It is sheer madness to be afraid to look to
the state of his soul to see whether it has the marks of death upon it
or not! Do not any of you be so foolish, so insane! You insure your
lives, you insure your houses, you put on warmer garments as winter
approaches and if you have only some slight ailment, you run to a
doctor! Have you no care about your immortal souls? Have you no anxiety
concerning death and eternity? Or are you resolved to play the fool
before high Heaven? I pray you, do not do it, but awake to something
like prudence! And any one of you who does so will say to God, as David
did, "I flee unto You to hide me." You never will do this until you
exercise such wise forethought as I urge upon you.

IV. Now, fourthly, and briefly, before anyone of us will say to the
Lord, "I flee unto You to hide me," there must be

A SOLID CONFIDENCE.

What kind of confidence do I mean? A solid confidence that God can hide
us. Did you notice the second hymn that we sang? It always seems to me
that the writer had a wonderful conception of God in His awfulness and
greatness to be feared and then he says–

"Yet I may love You, O my God!"

Think of the great God who made the Heavens and the earth, who is
everywhere, filling all things and doing all things according to the
good pleasure of His own will–and then say to yourself, "If I flee to
Him–if He will permit me to flee

to him to hide me–how safe I must be! It is He of whom I have been
afraid, but if I can hide in Him, how secure I shall be! If I can find
a shelter in Him, what a perfect shelter that must be!" When God lifts
up His sword of Justice in His almighty hand to smite the sinner, if
that sinner can lay hold upon His arm and cling firmly to it, how can
God smite him? And He urges us to take hold of His strength! A heavy
blow falls with the greatest force upon those who are some little
distance away from the striker. When a man intends to strike a
tremendous blow, if his adversary runs up close to him and clings to
his arm, what can he do with him? And fleeing to God to hide us does,
as it were, disarm God– therefore I urge you to flee to God in Christ
that He may hide you from His Justice and He can rightly do this
because Christ has borne for all Believers the punishment that was due
to their sin and, therefore, the God of Justice can, Himself, smile
when He sees a sinner hidden in the Christ who made a full and complete
Atonement for his sin!

Where can any of you flee from the Presence of God? If you ride upon
the sunbeams, He will track you. If you plunge into the deeps of the
sea, He will discover you. If you could climb up among the stars, He
could pluck you from your hiding place, for He is everywhere. But if
you flee to God in Christ to hide you, you must be safe forever! I have
read an old story of a rebel who was hunted by a certain king, but who
disguised himself and entered into the king's tent and partook of his
hospitality before anyone discovered that he was the very man whose
life the king had been seeking. And the king nobly and generously
refused to kill the foe who had fled for shelter to his own tent. O
poor guilty Soul, this is the message of the Gospel–Flee to God to
hide you from God! Turn to Him as the prodigal returned to his father
to obtain forgiveness of the wrong which he had done to his father!

And you Christian men and women, this is to be your constant joy, that
you always can hide in God–that there is no trouble, difficulty, or
danger from which God will not be a shelter to you, for, as He is a
shelter from His own Justice, He must be a shelter from everyone else
and everything else that would harm you! And you may always hide in
God. You will never say to the Lord, "I flee unto You to hide me,"
until you know that you may hide in Him. Yes, Beloved, you may flee to
God to hide you, for God is never more truly God than when He receives
poor souls that make Him to be their hiding place. It is said that on
one occasion when certain wise men were sitting together in council, a
poor bird, which was pursued by a hawk, flew into the bosom of one of
the counselors and he–the only man in the whole company who would have
done such a thing–plucked the trembling bird out of his bosom, wrung
its neck and threw it away from him! Whereupon the other counselors all
rose up and voted for his immediate expulsion from their assembly, for
they all felt that any man who could do such a deed as that was
unworthy to have a place in their ranks–and we may be quite sure that
the ever-merciful Jehovah will never take a soul that has flown in His
bosom for shelter and destroy it!

You dread God, poor Soul, but you need never do so. If you are in
Christ Jesus, God is so fully reconciled to you that when you are
pursued by sin, or Satan, or trouble of any kind, the safest place for
you to fly to is His bosom and there you are safe forever, for He will
never cast you out! If you have this confidence in God, you will say to
Him, as David did, "I flee unto You to hide me."

V. One thing more is needed and that is ACTIVITY OF FAITH.

There are some of you who have heard what I have been saying about
hiding in God. And as you go home you will say, "Yes, we know that we
are in danger, we know that we are weak, we know that we need a secure
hiding place and we know that God is willing to hide us." Well, then,
if you know that, will you not at once flee to Him to hide you?
Beloved, you who have often fled to Him to hide you, will not you again
flee to Him? Some of you may have a new form of trouble which has just
come upon you and it is of such a kind that you do not like to tell
anybody about it. I pray you, do not keep it to yourself for even
another minute, but flee to God and tell Him all about it! I must
confess my own folly in this respect, for I have been foolish enough,
partly through weariness of body and brain, to nurse a trouble which I
ought to have cast upon the Lord long ago. One does not mind nursing
his own children who may grow up to be a comfort to him, but it is
always a pity to nurse trouble, for that often means taking a serpent's
eggs and putting them into our bosom to hatch there into serpents that
will sting us! This is a most foolish course of action–would it not be
far wiser for us if as soon as any trouble comes upon us, to flee to
the Lord to hide us from it? Let us be cowardly enough to run away from
our trouble! No, it will not be cowardice, but true bravery to always
run to God as soon as any trouble comes upon us, each one of us crying
to Him with David, "I flee unto You to hide me."

Suppose that 20 troubles should come to us in a day and that we should
flee to God 20 times with them? I think that we might almost pray to
God to send 20 more troubles, so that we might flee to Him 40 times a
day! Any reason for

going to God must be a blessing to us, for going to God is going to
bliss! So we may even turn our troubles into blessings by making them
drive us to Him.

I want to steer you, dear Friends, to the practical point of my
subject. Have you been worrying yourself, since you have been here,
about a trial that you expect to fall upon you towards the close of
this year? You fear that Christmas is not likely to be "a merry
Christmas" to you–there are many bills coming in and not much hope of
the money with which to meet them. Well, then, flee to God with that
trouble and whatever is burdening your heart or your mind, flee to God
about it and leave it all in His hands–and go on your way rejoicing!

Last of all, is there not some poor sinner here who has never yet
believed in Jesus Christ as his or her Savior? How happy I should be if
even before you leave this place, you would flee to the Lord to hide
you! You do not need even to go into the vestry to talk to the elders.
You may do that, if you like, and they will be glad to see you–but
your best plan is to tell the Lord, while you are sitting in that seat,
that you are a sinner far off from Him and that you wish that He would
save you. Ask Him, for Christ's sake, to have mercy upon you. Trust His
dear Son to save you. Tell Him that you do trust Him to save you and He
will do it, for, according to your faith shall it be unto you. Flee to
Him to hide you!

There are His dear wounds and you are a poor feeble dove–and the cruel
hawk is after you. You cannot fight with him for he would tear you in
pieces–you can only escape from him by flying to the wounds of Jesus!
Do so, then, for your pursuer cannot reach you there–

"Come, guilty souls, and flee away Like doves to Jesus' wounds! This is
the welcome Gospel-Day, Wherein free Grace abounds." God bless you all,
for His dear Son's sake! Amen.

EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM143.

Psalm 143:1, 2. Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications:
in Your faithfulness answer me, and in Your righteousness. And enter
not into judgment with Your servant: for in Your sight shall no man
living be justified. That is, of course, apart from the wondrous system
of Justification by Faith in Jesus Christ whereby Believers are made
the righteousness of God in Him! Apart from that righteousness, no man
living can be justified in the sight of God.

3, 4. For the enemy has persecuted my soul, he has smitten my life down
to the ground; he has made me to dwell in darkness as those that have
been long dead. Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart
within me is desolate. Are any of you passing through this trying
experience? If so, does it not encourage you to find that somebody else
has been this way before you? The road is very rough, but there is a
man's footprint there, the footprint of a man whom God greatly loved,
even the man after God's own heart! Ah, dear Friends, in those deep
sorrows of yours, you are not alone–David has passed this way before
you and, what is still better, David's Lord has traversed this rough
road! In all our afflictions He was afflicted. He was tempted in all
points like as we are, so He can most perfectly sympathize with us in
all the troubles through which we are called to pass.

5, 6. Iremember the days of old; Imeditate on all Your works; Imuse on
the work of Your hands. I stretch forth my hands unto You: my soul
thirsts after You, as a thirsty land. Selah. One of the things which
God's people are in the habit of doing, when they are in deep trouble,
is to look back upon their past experiences. You may have seen the
bargemen on the canal push backwards that they may propel the barge
forwards and, sometimes we who believe in Jesus Christ have to push
backwards–to look back on our past experiences in order to derive
fresh courage for the present hour of trial. So the Psalmist says, "I
remember the days of old, I meditate on all Your works; I muse on the
work of Your hands." Yet in David's day of distress, when he had
meditated upon his experiences in the past, that did not satisfy him.
He wanted his God, therefore he cried unto the Lord, "I stretch forth
my hands unto You: my soul thirsts after You as a thirsty land." When
the fields have long been dry because there has been no rain, you see
how the earth opens its mouth in great cracks as if it gaped for the
rain it so sorely needs–and David's soul seemed thus gaping with a
strong desire after the living God–"My soul thirsts after You as a
thirsty land."

7, 8. Hear me speedily, O LORD; my spirit fails: hide not Your face
from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit. Cause me
to hear Your loving-kindness in the morning, for in You do I trust:
cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul
unto You. This is a beautiful prayer which any of you might present to
the Lord–"Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk." You are
perplexed as to what you ought to do. You wish to do that which is
right, but you are not sure what is right. Yet God can cause you to
know the way wherein you should walk–He leads the blind by a way that
they know not and in paths which they have not seen. So breathe this
prayer to Him in the hour of your perplexity–

"Guide me, O You great Jehovah,

Pilgrim through this barren land!

I am weak, but You are mighty,

Hold me with Your powerful hand!" Or say with David, "Cause me to know
the way wherein I should walk, for I lift up my soul unto You." He
seems to say, "My soul is like a dead weight which cannot lift itself
up; but in the strength which You do impart to me, I lift it up, I will
not let it lie like a dead log before You–'I lift up my soul unto
You.'"

9, 10. Deliver me, O LORD, from my enemies: I flee unto You to hide me.
Teach me to do Your will. This is another most blessed prayer–"Teach
me to do Your will." Most of us want to have our own will and to go our
own way–but each one who is truly wise prays to the Lord, "Teach me to
do Your will."

10, 11. For You are my God; Your spirit is good; lead me into the land
of uprightness. Quicken me, O LORD, for Your name's sake: for Your
righteousness' sake bring my soul out of trouble. What earnest pleading
is this and how powerful it is! Every word is so fitting that if I had
time to explain it, you would note the force and appropriateness of
every syllable that the Psalmist here uses.

12. And of Your mercy cut off my enemies, and destroy all them that
afflict my soul: for I am Your servant.