Pleading Prayer
DELIVERED BY
C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
"Remember the Word unto Your servant upon which You have caused me to
hope." Psalm 119:49.
THE 119th Psalm is a very wonderful composition. Its expressions are
many as the waves, but its testimony is one as the sea. It deals all
along with the same subject and it consists, as you observe, of a vast
number of verses, some of which are very similar to others. And yet
throughout the 176 stanzas, the same thought is not repeated–there is
always a shade of difference even when the color of the thought appears
to be the same. Some have said that in it there is an absence of
variety, but that is merely the observation of those who have not
studied it. I have weighed each word and looked at each syllable with
lengthened meditation–and I bear witness that this sacred song has no
tautology in it, but is charmingly varied from beginning to end! Its
variety is that of a kaleidoscope–from a few objects, a boundless
variation is produced. In the kaleidoscope you look once and there is a
strangely beautiful form. You shift the glass a very little and another
shape, equally delicate and beautiful, is before your eyes. So it is
here. What you see is the same and yet never the same–it is the same
Truth of God, but it is always placed in a new light, put in a new
connection, or in some way or other invested with freshness!
I do not believe that any other subject but a heavenly one would have
allowed of such a Psalm being written upon it, for the things of this
world are soon spun out. Neither could such a handling have been given
to the subject by any mind less than Divine–Inspiration, alone, can
account for the fullness and freshness of this Psalm.
The best compositions of men are soon exhausted. They are cisterns and
not springing fountains. You enjoy them very much at the first
acquaintance and you think you could hear them a hundred times over,
but you could not–you soon find them wearisome. Very speedily a man
eats too much honey. Even children, at last, are cloyed with sweets.
All human books grow stale after a time–but with the Word of God the
desire to know increases and the more you know of it the less you think
you know! The Book grows upon you. As you dive into its depths, you
have a growing perception of the infinity which remains unexplored. You
are still sighing to know more of that which it is your bliss to know.
This wonderful Psalm, from its great length, helps us to wonder at the
immensity of Scripture. From its keeping to one subject it helps us to
adore the unity of Scripture, for it is but one. Yet, from the many
turns it gives to the same thought, it helps you to see the variety of
Scripture. How manifold are the words and thoughts of God! In His Word,
just as in creation, the wonders of His skill are manifold, indeed.
I very greatly admire in this Psalm the singular amalgam that we have
of testimony, of prayer and of praise. In one verse the Psalmist bears
witness. In a second verse he praises. In a third verse he prays. It is
an incense made up of many spices, but they are wonderfully compounded
and worked together so as to form one perfect sweetness. You would not
like to have one-third of the Psalm composed of prayer–marked up to
the 60th verse, for instance, and then another part made up exclusively
of praise and yet a third portion of unmixed testimony. It is best to
have all these Divinely-sweet ingredients intermixed and worked into a
sacred unity, as you have them in this thrice-hallowed Psalm. My text
is a prayer, but there is testimony in it and there is a measure of
praise in it, too. In this single text there is the same mixing up of
sweet perfumes as there is in the whole Psalm! May God give us Grace to
be in such a state of heart that we may enter into the prayer of the
text! Wherein it bears grateful testimony, may we be able to join in
that testimony! Wherein it praises God, may we also extol Him with all
our hearts!
There are only two things that I can attempt to speak about at this
time. I cannot bring forth from so rich a casket all its treasures. The
first is, the prayer–"Remember the Word unto Your servant, upon which
You have caused me to
hope." And, secondly, the plea of the prayer. It is a three-fold plea,
as I think–it is Your word, I am Your servant and You have caused me
to hope in it. Come, Holy Spirit and bless our meditation!
I. First, then, THE PRAYER. David prays, "Remember the Word unto Your
servant."
"Remember." That prayer is spoken after the manner of men, for God
cannot forget. It would be a very low conception of His Omniscience if
we imagined that anything passed away from His knowledge. We see things
as they come one after the other in a procession, but God is in a
position from which He sees all at once. A man traveling through
England sees a portion at a time, but he that looks at a map sees the
whole country present before him then and there. God sees everything as
now. Nothing is past, nothing is future to Him. He sees things that are
not as though they were and the things that shall be as though they had
been! God does not forget and, therefore, the text speaks only in a
certain restricted sense and must be understood after the manner of
men. Beloved, after what other manner could we speak? God has not
taught us to speak after the manner of God! How could we? We are not
Divine. There is a language above which Paul heard, of which he said
that it was not lawful for a man to utter. Men must speak after the
manner of men–and each sort of a man must speak after his own manner.
Do not, therefore, let us censure a young Brother when he utters a
prayer which is very natural from him, though it sounds strange to us.
Let us not condemn him because his language is not strictly accurate,
for though it may jar upon our ears, the Lord may be well pleased with
it. You are intelligent, educated and a full-grown Christian–and the
childish language of a beginner may jar upon your ears–but you must
bear the jarring, for the Lord bears much more from you and others of
His children. If the language is natural to the new convert and flows
from his heart, he speaks after the manner and according to the manner
of men, which manner is always faulty. You do no better if judged from
God's point of view. We are far too apt to make men offenders for
words. Certainly God might make the best of His servants offenders for
the best of their words if He pleased.
In such a case as this He might have caught up His servant David, and
said sharply, "Remember? Do you say 'Remember' to Me? Do you imagine
that I can forget? And do you take it upon yourself to speak unto the
eternal God and say to Him, 'Remember'?" Yet there is no fault found
with that prayer. On the contrary, it is a prayer that the Holy Spirit,
Himself, inspired and the Holy Spirit has recorded it and put it in
this Psalm as a pattern, that we may pray after the same fashion. I
guarantee you that if our prayers were gauged according to the standard
of language which is used by angels before the eternal Throne of God,
they would seem very, very poor things, full of faulty expressions. But
God does not measure them so, for though we speak after the manner of
men, it is much to our comfort that God loves the manner of men, for it
is the manner of His Only-Begotten Son! It is thus that Jesus spoke and
the Lord, in our feeble tones, which in themselves might be open to
censure, hears the language of the Son of Man and for His dear sake He
does not condemn our speaking after the manner of men.
He permits us so to speak, for He, Himself, knows how to read between
the lines. He takes the meaning of our groans and tears–and when we
fail to express ourselves suitably in words–He reads our hearts and
accepts our secret meanings. I think I am warranted in making these
remarks upon this expression of the prayer, "Remember the Word unto
Your servant," and I hope they will furnish comfort to those of you who
have very slender gifts of utterance when you approach the Mercy Seat.
I do not, however, conceal from myself the fact that it is language
which has some trace of unbelief in it. Perhaps no unbelief was in the
Psalmist's heart at the time, but it is language fit for the lips of
one who has not always been at all times a firm and unstaggering
Believer. It looks as if the thought that the Lord might forget had
crossed the pleader's soul. It looks as if, even though it had not been
tolerated–for faith had cast it out–yet the suggestion had knocked at
the door of the mind, saying, "My way is hid from the Lord and my
judgment is passed over from my God." We do not say to another person,
"Remember," unless there is at least the apprehension of the
possibility of forgetfulness. David could not quite mean, when he came
to think it over, that he really thought that God would forget, but we
usually speak in haste when we speak in unbelief–and then we do not
measure what we say.
Unbelief is the hurry of the soul. A regenerate soul sitting still and
correctly weighing the whole question between the eternal faithfulness
of God and the passing troubles of life, cannot be long in coming to a
confident conclusion. There is a hurry about our cares and
anxieties–and in our hurry we are apt to rush to the foolish
conclusion that the Lord may forget us. O poor worried child, if you
are so foolish as to allow so absurd a fear to enter your bosom, your
Father would
sooner that you should express your apprehension to Him than hide it in
your heart! A smothered fire is always dangerous. Rake it out! If you
have the suspicion that you may be forgotten, pray right honestly,
"Remember the Word unto Your servant." These prayers are placed in
Scripture on purpose that they may be expressions of what we are half
afraid to express. The dread is really there and God sees it–and He
tutors us to give it vent. With groans that cannot be uttered, His
Spirit helps us! But sometimes He helps us another way, namely, by
helping us to utter those groans. He encourages us to express what at
first we dared not utter. So we are helped to say, "Remember the Word,"
though we blush to think that it ever should have occurred to us that
God could forget!
Let us look at the prayer again–"Remember the Word unto Your servant."
The intention of him who prayed this prayer was to ask God to remember
His Word by fulfilling it. That is the real meaning of it, as when a
servant sometimes says, "I hope you will remember me." Yes, we will
remember him, but that is not quite what he means. Those who speak thus
hope that we will give them some token of remembrance–some practical
proof that we remember them! So does this prayer mean, "Lord, let me
not only be in Your thoughts, but let me be in Your acts! You have
promised to supply my needs; remember me by supplying my needs. You
have promised to forgive my sin; remember me by giving me a sense of
pardon. You have promised to help Your servant and give me strength
according to my day–remember Your Word by fulfilling Your Word and
granting strength to me according as I have need of it."
Now, Beloved, this is very legitimate praying. In fact, it is the very
essence of prayer to put God in mind of what He has promised. You can
never pray an inch beyond the tether of the promise with any assurance
of being heard. For my own part, I always feel on sure ground with God
when I can quote His own Words. I feel, then, that I may ask boldly and
I need not put in, "If it is Your will," and those other reservations,
because if His promise were not His will, He would not have spoken it.
There is the promise in His Word and I know that He put it there as the
index of what He intended to give and to do–and as an invitation to
His child to plead with Him about those very things which He has so
indicated and say to Him–"Now, Lord, do as You have said." Therefore I
follow the line the Lord has marked out for me and I expect Him to do
as He has said.
It is a grand thing, when you are pleading with any man, to bring his
own handwriting before him. You have, then, a hold upon him of the
firmest kind. You have his promise in black and white and he cannot run
back from that. The intent of God in giving us the promise, as it were,
in black and white, in His own handwriting, is that He may be enquired
of by us to do those very things which He has engaged Himself to do.
Ungodly men cannot make out what prayer is. "Do you suppose," they say,
"that you can change the will of God?" We reply to them–We never
supposed anything of the kind, but we suppose that our prayer is the
shadow of a coming blessing. As "coming events cast their shadows
before them," so, when God is about to bless us, He moves us to pray
for that very blessing! If it were possible to shut out the man's
shadow, we could not expect the man to enter! And if it were possible
to shut out prayer from our soul, we should feel, at the same time,
that we had shut out the blessing.
Our Lord is pleased to duplicate His mercies. The blessing itself is
great, but it is an equal blessing to be made to pray for it! It
frequently does a child more good to get a favor from his father than
the favor itself brings him. If the father sets him some little task to
do, if he says, "Now, my child, prove to me that this will be a good
thing," the mental exercise, the pleading, the asking may be as useful
in the child's education as the thing for which he asks. I say, again,
our God doubles His blessings by making His servants pray for them!
Prayer, then, is nothing more than this–my believ-ingly remembering
that God has promised a certain blessing and then my reminding Him that
He has promised it. It is not supposable that He will forget, but He
would have me act towards Him as if He might forget in order that by
such an exercise I, myself, may come to value the blessing and may be
stirred up to importunity and fervor. The prayer is a right one when we
say, "Remember the Word unto Your servant." It is, in fact, what God
always intends prayer to be–a reminding our heavenly Father of His
promises.
Sometimes this word, "remember," is very fitly used, because it seems
to the mind that God is likely to remember something else which would
be to our loss. Suppose you and I have been walking contrary to
God–and sometimes His people do walk contrary to Him–then the Lord
may remember our sins and He may begin to deal with us in a way of
chastisement and lay us very low. Then is the time to come in with this
prayer–"Remember the Word unto Your servant."
It is as much as to say, "Albeit that my sins clamor in Your ears and
cry out that You should smite me, yet remember Your Word of promise, of
pardon, of pity, of power–and let me live. I admit, my gracious Lord,
that if You do listen to the voice of my actions, they proclaim me to
be most ungrateful. If You do listen to my feebleness in prayer, it
will accuse me of lack of earnestness and, therefore, You may be
inclined to deny it to me. All my forgetfulnesses, shortcomings and
transgressions cry out against me–if You hear these, my Lord, You may
well reach for the rod and smite me again and again, but oh, be deaf to
these voices and hear only the music of Your own Word!–
'Not my sins, O Lord, remember,
Not Your own avenger be!
But, for Your great tender mercies, Savior,
God, remember me!'
Remember the Word, and forget my words. Remember the Word whereon You
have caused me to hope and forget the things wherein I have caused You
to be angry. I know You might well remember my sins, as You did the
sins of Israel in the wilderness, and say, 'They shall not enter into
My rest,' but I beseech You, do not! You might hear my provocations and
my unbeliefs and say, 'You shall die in the wilderness,' but, O my God,
as Moses pleaded Your Covenant with You, so do I plead with You, not
for my sake, but for Your Word's sake! Not for my sake, but for Your
promise' sake, and Your Covenant's sake! I beseech You, fail not Your
servant, but bear with me, still, till You shall bring me into the rest
which You have promised me."
You see, then, the singular appropriateness of the expression, though
at first it might seem to be a questionable one. "Remember the Word
unto Your servant." Brothers and Sisters, the great mercy to us is that
God has a very strong memory. Towards His people He has a memory so
strong that He has said, "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that
she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yes, they may
forget; yet will I not forget you." What a strong memory that is which
is stronger than the memory of a mother towards the babe at her breast!
Oh, blessed memory of God! "Yet will I not forget you. Behold, I have
engraved you," He says, "upon the palms of My hands." There is no
forgetting a thing that is written on the palms of your hands! You
cannot do any work but you see it there! And God cannot do any work
without seeing His children's names. He can do no work of judgment
without seeing their names and, therefore, He spares His people. He can
do no work of bounty but what their names are on His hands and,
therefore, He says, "Surely, blessing I will bless you, and multiplying
I will multiply you." His hands are branded with the names of His
beloved and it is not possible that He can forget them! The Lord has a
loving memory. He cannot forget His own. Think of Words like these–"I
remember you, the love of your espousals." "O Israel, you shall not be
forgotten of Me." "The Lord your God will not forsake you, nor forget
the Covenant of your fathers which He swore unto them."
And then, our God has a long memory. How many ages was it before Christ
came and yet His coming was always on the Lord's mind! The fullness of
time had not yet arrived and yet the Lord did not forget it, for no
sooner did the clock strike than that very night–they did not wait
till the morning–a multitude of the heavenly host recognized the sign
and their praise flowed forth in a cataract of delightful song which
filled the midnight air! They sang, "Glory to God in the highest, and
on earth peace, good will toward men." Christ was born at the very
moment when God decreed that He should be born. The weeks were ended,
the dispensation closed and lo, He came! God has a very exact and
punctual memory. Remember when Israel came out of Egypt–"the same day"
did the Lord lead them forth! The Lord glories in the exactness of the
hour. I know some persons who would never leave a bill unpaid for a day
and, as for their rent, they are ready before twelve o'clock strikes
and they say, "My landlord has never had to wait. I was always at the
door to the very moment." You shall find that God, though He never is
before His time, yet never is too late. He has a very exact memory–a
memory about little things and about moments of time–and He keeps
touch with His servants even to the jots and tittles of the Word which
He has given.
He has, Beloved, a very gracious memory towards His people because it
is strong in certain matters, but in love He makes it very weak in
other points. He says, "Their sins and their iniquities will I remember
no more." He has forgotten their transgressions and cast all their sins
into the depths of the sea! All the strength of the Lord's memory that
might have gone in the direction of noting our evil deeds runs the
other way! He is all the more powerful to remember us for good because
He will never remember our evil as long as He lives. Beloved, the Lord
thinks upon you to do you good. Speaking after the manner of men, He
schemes, plots and plans to do His people good! He says that He will
bless us with His whole heart and with His whole soul. That is a
wonderful expression! Let me give you the precise text, "Yes, I will
rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land
assuredly with My whole heart and with my whole soul." Think of God
blessing His people with His whole heart, rejoicing over them to do
them good! "The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous" and the heart
of the Lord is occupied with the cases of His own people. Blessed be
His dear name, we have very much to appeal to when we pray, "Remember
the Word unto Your servant, upon which You have caused me to hope."
II. The time flies too quickly and, therefore, let me mention, in the
second place, THE PLEAS WHICH THE PALMIST USES. The first is, "Remember
the Word." It is a blessed plea–the Word–for by the Word upon which
God had caused His servant to hope is meant God's Word. He never makes
His people to hope in anybody else's word. It is in the Lord's Word
that the hope of His people finds support. Let us consider the power,
the dignity, the glory of that Word. This is the greatest of all
grounds of assurance!
I have already said that you cannot have a greater hold upon a man than
when you have his own word to plead. "Remember the Word." God is
Sovereign. He has the right to do absolutely as He wills. "Who shall
stay His hand, or say unto Him, What are You doing?" But God–let us
speak with reverence–when He gives a promise, binds Himself with cords
of His own making. He binds Himself down to such and such a course when
He says that such and such a thing shall be. Therefore, when you grasp
the promise, you get a hold on God. Wondrous fact! Marvelous that we
should be able, as it were, to move the arm that moves the stars and to
hold the King who holds the waters in the hollow of His hand! If You
have His promise for it, God must give you the blessing–God can sooner
cease to be than cease to be true. "He is not a man, that He should
lie, neither the son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and
shall He not do it?"
There is nothing on earth, there is nothing in Heaven half so steadfast
as the simple, naked Word of God. How mighty is this plea, when you
present before the Lord His own sacred Word! It is a royal Word. We do
not expect kings to play fast and loose with words. They say, "If honor
were banished from all the rest of mankind, it ought still to find a
refuge in the breast of kings." But what shall I say of, "the King
eternal, immortal, invisible"? Will He lie? Do You suspect the one
"Blessed and only Potentate," the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? How
you insult His Majesty if you dream that He can falsify His solemn
pledge and break His Word! "Where the word of a king is, there is
power," because there is faithfulness at the back of it.
But it is more than a royal Word, Brothers and Sisters. It is an
irrevocable Word. Man has to eat his words, sometimes, and unsay his
say. He would perform his engagement, but he cannot. It is not that he
is unfaithful, but that he is unable. Now this is never so with God.
His Word never returns to Him void. Go, find the snowflakes winging
their way like white doves back to Heaven! Go, find the drops of rain
rising upward like diamonds flung up from the hand of a mighty man to
find a lodging place in the cloud from which they fell! Until the snow
and the rain return to Heaven and mock the ground which they promised
to bless, the Word of God shall never return to Him void! What He has
promised shall be and what He has revealed shall surely be
accomplished, for be sure of this–God has never spoken in secret, in a
dark place of the earth, so as to revoke a single Word which He has
spoken aforetime. He has never disannulled one of His ordinances, or
cancelled one of His promises. The everlasting decree stands firm as
the Throne of Jehovah and the promise is as unfailing as the decree.
Not only is it an irrevocable Word, but it is an almighty Word.
Recollect, Brethren, that by the Word of God were the heavens made and
all the hosts of them! And it is by His Word that all things consist.
You and I are most foolish when we want something more to rest upon
than the Word of God. My great trouble in battling with anxious
enquirers is that they demand needless evidences and cry out for marks
and tokens. And I have to put it to them very plainly–"Then I suppose
God is a liar and you will not believe Him unless He brings evidence to
support His Word. You are obliged to run out of doors to find proof of
what He says and you will not believe it unless you get that proof." It
is too much so with us. I tell you, Sirs, that the bare Word of God is
better than all the proofs, evidences, signs and marks that could be
heaped together throughout eternity! And what is more, I will say that
if all the marks, tokens, signs, evidences, promises and oaths of men
all said, "No"–if God says, "Yes," His, "Yes," surpasses all the
"Noes" and all the other denials that could possibly be gathered
together!
Our faith ought to give God credit for this, for the Lord God cannot be
otherwise than true–we must not suppose such a thing! Unlimited faith
is no more than God deserves. He cannot err or fail. "The heavens are
not clean in His sight and His angels He charged with folly." And He
charged them with it not without reason, for all things compared with
Him are folly and the greatest of intellects are but fools compared
with God! With Him there cannot possibly be a failure or a falsehood!
Oh, that we had power to grasp His Word as it ought to be grasped! Our
hope lies there.
Are you hungry tonight? Has it even come to this? And have you God's
promise that you shall be fed? Then you shall be fed! You shall be fed.
The devil comes to you and he says, "Yes, you may be fed, but you must
do a wrong action in order to get the food." He speaks to the Son of
God, again, and he says, "Command that these stones be made bread."
Listen not to him, but believe God! Now is your time to glorify God. A
faith that can believe over a hungry belly is faith, indeed! Yet it is
only such a faith as is due to God. God will abundantly justify all the
trust we repose in Him. Tell the devil, "Man shall not live by bread
alone, but by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." There
is nutriment in God's Word! There is everything in that Word of God!
The creature owes its power to bless and nourish to the will of God.
And if the creature is absent, the will of God can still achieve its
purpose by His Word without the creature! I put this in a very strong
light, but I am certain that I go no further than God's Word will
warrant. Oh for Grace to plead the promise and to rest upon it!
Beloved, when you are praying in time of trouble, what a blessed plea
for you, "Lord, remember the Word! You have said in Your Word, 'When
you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the
rivers, they shall not overflow you."' He will remember it! You may
forget the Word of the Lord, but He does not–and when you plead it,
the answer of peace shall come to your soul–"I do earnestly remember
you still." Though the Lord chastens you, yet He does not forget you.
His chastisement is proof that He thinks of you. He will not set you as
Admah, nor make you as Ze-boim, for everlasting love cannot forget the
objects of its choice. He chooses us for His love and loves us for His
choice. Therefore, plead well His Word.
The second plea lies in the words, "Your servant." "Remember the Word
unto Your servant." A man is bound to keep his word to anybody and
everybody, but sometimes there may be special persons with whom a
failure world be peculiarly dishonorable. Among the rest, a man must be
true to his servant.
Notice, first, "Remember the Word unto Your servant," means this,
"Lord, it is Your Grace that has made me Your servant. I was once an
outcast. I was once Your enemy. Lord, I did not come to You, but You
did come to me. I did not seek employment at Your hands–I was too
wicked for that, but You did seek me. It was Your Grace that made me
Your servant. Now, Lord, have You brought me to be Your servant to put
me to shame? You have done the greater thing for me, will You not do
the less? To take me into Your service was great condescension on Your
part–will You not grant me my rations? Will You not find me my livery?
Will You not be gracious to me?" This is good pleading, is it not?
Again, here is a further plea. A servant has a claim upon his master.
We dare say it very reverently, that we have a claim upon God when we
are His servants. Of course, that claim is only such as He allows and
it is founded alone on Grace. But still it is a strong plea with our
gracious Master. He was thought to be an evil man who left his servant
to perish when he was sick. He could do no more work and so his cruel
owner left him by the way to die. No good master would do that. Lord,
will You do that with me? When I grow sick, will You forsake me? When I
grow old, will You desert me? When I cannot speak in Your name any
longer, will You disown me? When I cannot stand any longer by reason of
feebleness, will You throw me on one side? When I lie gasping upon my
death bed, will You say, "I have had his best days, but I will leave
him now"? The supposition would be blasphemous! It cannot be. O my
Brothers and Sisters, our God will not leave us! When the old man's
heart cries, "O God, You have taught me from my youth and, up to now I
have declared Your wondrous works! Now, also, when I am old and
grey-headed, O God, forsake me not." The Lord answers, "Even to your
old age I am He; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made,
and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you." Our heavenly
Lord is not like that Amalekite master who left his Egyptian servant in
the field because he was ill. Let us not imagine such a thing!
There is this further plea. If a man sets his servants such and such a
work to do, is he not bound to find them the means of doing it? Only a
cruel task-master compels men to make bricks and gives them no straw to
mingle with the clay. We are not dealing with Pharaoh, remember–we are
dealing with Jehovah who acts on quite another principle. Beloved, the
Lord never sent any one of His soldiers to warfare at His own charges.
How frequently, when my Master sends me to the front, I have to cry to
Him, "Lord, grant me fresh supplies! Lord, send on the ammunition! I
must have powder. I must have funds and Grace and guidance! Lord, send
fresh men! Fill up the ranks as one after another falls on the
field!"
I find Him always ready with His reinforcements and His succors and His
stores. There is no failure of commissariat with God. He takes good
care of His fighting servants, His suffering servants, His plowing
servants and His sowing servants–and so you would expect Him to do. A
good master will not set his servant a hard task beyond his strength
and then refuse to lift a hand to help him. That would be far from the
God of infinite mercy. Now, dear Sister, you that have begun to teach
in the Sunday school and feel that you are hardly equal to it, the Lord
will help you. Go on. Do not give up. You that have been trying to
preach in the villages, but who do not see any good coming of it and
are half inclined to run away, stand to your guns. Cry to the Lord for
more strength and He will help you. And let this be the plea, "Lord,
remember the Word unto Your servant, for I am Your servant, Lord. I
desire to be wholly Yours. I give myself to You– body, soul and
spirit. And my cry is, 'Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the
horns of the altar.' I am Your servant. My ear is bored to the doorpost
and I would never quit Your service, or labor for another."
You remember what the old man-servant said, in the olden time, when his
master angrily said, "We must part, John." "I hope not, Sir. Where are
you going?" The servant had no intention to go anywhere! "Ah," said his
master, "I do not intend to employ you any longer." The old servant is
said to have answered, "Sir, if you have not a good servant, I know
that I have a good master, and I do not mean to leave him. I cannot
think of going away." It is a grand thing to feel that you are not
going away from God–that you have such a good Master that you are
going to cling to the posts of His door–and if He puts You out by the
front door, You mean to come in at the back! Let the Lord do what He
pleases, I am forever bound to belong to Him, only! Brother, resolve
that if you cannot preach for your Lord, you will hear for Him! And if
You cannot be a leader of the Church, you will be a follower,
somewhere, but you will serve your Lord forever. This, then, is one of
the pleas. "Remember the Word unto Your servant."
The last plea I shall offer but a few words upon. "Upon which You have
caused me to hope." Lord, I have been hoping on Your Word and I have
acted upon that hope. I believe the Word to be true and I have pledged
the truth of it. That is good pleading. A man has given me a bill–not
a transaction I ever have anything to do with–but suppose such a
thing. Suppose I go and discount it. I say, "My Friend, you must honor
that bill because I have received the cash for it. Do not fail to meet
it." It is as if we said to our God–"Lord, You have caused me to hope
upon this promise of Yours. I have been raising present comfort upon
the credit of it. I felt so sure that it would be fulfilled that I have
taken it into the market and I have been living upon its proceeds by
hoping on it." See how David went and discounted the promissory
note–he encouraged himself by it. Turn to the verses which follow my
text and you will see. "This is my comfort in my affliction: for Your
Word has quickened me." He had been comforting himself by the promise.
And if the promise failed, that comfort would turn out to be a sheer
delusion. Will the Lord delude those who trust Him?
Read the next verse–"The proud have had me greatly in derision: yet
have I not declined from Your Law." I stuck to Your doctrine, Your
precept, Your promise. I declared Your Word to be true–will You not
keep it and so vindicate my confident assurance? "I remembered Your
judgments of old, O Lord; and have comforted myself." I have thus
already derived strength and establishment out of Your promises. Will
You allow the enemy to tell me that I have deceived myself? Will You
revoke Your declarations? It cannot be! What is more, "Your statutes
have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage." I have been singing
Your promise over and over. I feel so sure of it that, before it has
been fulfilled, I have been singing about it! Lord, shall I be made a
fool of by having sung for nothing?
Again, "I have remembered Your name, O Lord, in the night, and have
kept Your Law." I rose in the night to bless You for Your promises. I
sat up in my bed and clapped my hands with delight because You have
given this promise and laid it home to my heart. Shall it not come
true? Ah, Beloved! You may rest assured of this–Your faith never went
beyond the goodness of Your God and it never will! If You believe great
things of Him, He will do greater things than You believe! He will do
exceeding abundantly above what You ask, or even think!
This is wonderfully blessed pleading. "You have caused me to hope;
therefore, O Lord, remember Your Word!" When I read how God kept His
promise to His people of old, I said, "He will keep it to me." And when
I remembered how He had kept other promises to me in past times, I
said, "He will keep this, also." His former dealings have induced us to
trust in Him. If He had not been so gracious to us on former occasions,
we would never have expected to be heard this time. But His love in
times past compels us to trust Him now. "Lord, You have caused me to
hope: my hope is of Your creating, nourishing and perfecting. I am
justified in hoping in You on this occasion from what You have done for
me in days gone by. This hope of mine is the work of Your Holy Spirit
in my soul. Can Your Holy Spirit make a poor
soul hope for that which He will never receive? Can Your Holy Spirit
tantalize me by exciting a hope which is never to be fulfilled? You
have caused me to hope. It was Your Word and I was Your servant, and I
believe Your Word, and Your Spirit helped me to go from faith to hope!
And now, when the windows of hope are opened, will You not be pleased
to send in a messenger of Grace and peace?" O needy child of God, go
home and plead in this fashion and you shall not return empty!
Have you come into a position from which there seems to be no escape?
Do not ask to escape, but cry, "Remember the Word unto Your servant,
upon which You have caused me to hope."
You, poor sinner over yonder, that has never found Christ, think of
this gracious Word, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out."
Lay hold on that loving declaration and hope in it! And then say,
"Lord, remember the Word unto Your servant, upon which You have caused
me to hope." The Lord bless you all and give you a joyful hope in His
sure promise, for His name's sake! Amen and amen.