Rejoicing and Remembering
(No. 2461)
A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, APRIL 19, 1896.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, APRIL
4, 1886.
"We will be glad and rejoice in You, we will remember Your love more
than wine." Song of Solomon 1:4.
IT is a very blessed habit of saints who have grown in Grace to enter
into actual conversation with the Well-Beloved. Our text is not so much
speaking of Him as speaking to Him–"We will be glad and rejoice in
You, we will remember Your love more than wine." Of course, in prayer
and in praise, we speak to God, but I suggest that we should seek to
have much more of intense and familiar conversations with the Lord
Jesus Christ than the most of us at present enjoy. I find it good,
sometimes in prayer, to say nothing, but to sit or kneel quite still
and to look up to my Lord in adoring silence–and then sometimes to
talk to Him, not asking anything of Him, but just speaking familiarly
with Jesus, realizing Him to be present, and waiting to hear Him speak
until some precious Word of His from Scripture comes into my soul as
with living accents newly-spoken by those dear lips which are as lilies
dropping sweet-smelling myrrh! The French have a word which they use
concerning that conversation which is common among those who love one
another, or are on terms of intimate friendship. They call it,
"tutoyage," for they say, "you" and, "your," to one another, instead of
the more formal language used towards strangers. I like that form of
expression that is used in our text and delight to meet with souls that
are brought into so rapt a state of fellowship with Christ that they
can speak to Him in this familiar fashion, "We will be glad and rejoice
in You, we will remember Your love more than wine."
If you, dear Friends, have not lately conversed with Jesus, do so now
in the quietude of your own spirit. Think that His shadow is over
you–do not let it be mere imagination, but let it be what is far
better than that–a true realizing faith–for if He is present where
two or three are met together in His name, rest assured that He is not
absent where this great assembly of His people has come together to
commemorate His passion and His death! You are here, blessed
Mas-ter–we are sure that You are and we worship You and speak with You
as really as if we could see You with that vesture on, woven from the
top throughout–as truly as if we saw You, now, lifting that beloved
pierced hand and laying it upon us! And we say to You from the bottom
of our hearts, "We will rejoice and be glad in You, we will remember
Your love more than wine." This text is not so much for me to explain,
dear Friends, as for you to enjoy! Forget all about the preacher, but
take the text and part it among yourselves–extract as much as you can
of its spiritual nourishment and feed upon it!
I. As you do so, you will notice, first, that we have, here, A DOUBLE
RESOLVE– "We will be glad and rejoice in You, we will remember Your
love more than wine."
I may say of that resolve that it is, first, a necessary resolve, for
it is not according to human nature to rejoice in Christ. It is not
according to the tendency of our poor fallen state to remember His
love. There must be an act of the will with regard to this resolve–let
us will it now–"We will be glad and rejoice in You, we will remember
Your love more than wine." There are so many things that try to come in
between our souls and our Savior, so many sorrows that would prevent
our rejoicing in Him, that we must be resolved to be glad in Him
whatever our sorrows may be. Down with you, sorrows! Down with you! We
have said unto the Lord that we will be glad and rejoice in Him and we
mean to prove our words to be true! Then there are so many troublous
thoughts that come flying in to mar our full fellowship with our Lord.
However tightly windows may be closed and doors may be shut, these
thoughts will find an entrance and we get to remembering the sick child
at home, or some care that has afflicted us during the week. Oh, but,
Lord, we will not remember these things, now! We say to You from our
hearts, "We will–we will–we will remember Your love!" Away with you,
care, sorrow, grief–away with you! Come to me, O Holy Spirit, and help
me, now, to have a happy time, to be glad and rejoice in my Lord–and
to have a holy time–to remember His love and to remember nothing else!
You must will it most intensely, dear Friends, or it will not come to
pass. It is not sufficient to merely walk into a place of worship and
put ourselves into the posture of devotion–and then to imagine that,
doing whatever is proper to the place and the hour–we shall have
fellowship with Jesus. Oh, no, Beloved! Oh, no! We must worship Him in
spirit and in truth, not in fiction and in sham–not mechanically, as
though we could have true fellowship with Him without earnest and
intense desire. No, there must be these two utterances of our holy
resolve, "We will be glad and rejoice in You, we will remember Your
love more than wine."
And truly, dear Friends, as this resolve is necessary, it is also a
right and proper resolve. Should we not be glad and rejoice in
Christ?–
"Why should the children of a King Go mourning all their days?"
Why should the children of the bride-chamber fast while the Bridegroom
is with them? With such a Husband as we have in Christ, should not the
spouse rejoice in Him? Would it be becoming for a heart that is married
to Christ to be in any other condition than that of rejoicing in Him? I
know you have many things in which you cannot rejoice. Well, let them
go. But you can rejoice in Him–in His Person, in His work, in His
offices, in His relationships, in His power, in His Glory, in His First
Advent, in His Second Adventl Surely, these are not things that can be
thought of without delightful emotion! It is most proper that we should
be glad and rejoice in our Lord. There ought to be a reduplication of
our joy–we should joy in Him and then rejoice in Him–we should "be
glad and rejoice" in Him.
It is most proper that we should be glad in the Lord and what can be
more proper than that we should remember Him? What a shame it is that
we ever forget Him! His name should be so deeply engraved on our hearts
that we cannot forget Him. Let us remember His love, for, surely if
there is anything that we ought to remember, it is that undying love
which is our choicest portion on earth and which will be the main
constituent of our highest bliss in Heaven! Then, by the help of God's
Spirit, let us make this resolve at this moment. Whatever we may do
when we get out of this building, at any rate for the next half-hour
let us resolve to stand to this double declaration, "We will rejoice,
and we will remember."
Do you not think, also, that this resolution, if we carry it out, will
be very helpful to ourselves? What a help it is to a Christian to be
glad in the Lord! I know what it is to be depressed. I do not suppose
there is any person in this place who knows what it is to be cast down
so low as I sometimes am. Then I feel that there is no help for me and
no hope of my living and working unless I can get out of that sad
condition and get to be glad in the Lord. And I cry, "My Heart, my
Heart, what are you doing? Why are you cast down, O my Soul? And why
are you disquieted within me? Hope in God: for I shall yet praise Him,
who is the health of my countenance and my God." There is no way of
getting right out of the Stygian bog of the Slough of Despond like
rejoicing in the Lord! If you try to rejoice in yourself, you will have
a poor reason for joy. But if you rejoice and are glad in the Lord, you
have the real, abiding, unchanging source of joy, for he who rejoices
in Christ rejoices in Him who is "the same yesterday, today and
forever." And he may always rejoice in Him! Come, then, and for your
own good hang up the sackbut and take down the psaltery–put away the
ashes! What if men call this season, "Lent"? We will keep no Lent,
tonight–this is our Eastertide! Our Lord has risen from the dead and
He is among us, and we will rejoice in Him! Come, Beloved, surely it is
time that we did, for a while, at least, forget our pain, griefs and
all the worries of this weary world and, for one, I must, I will, be
glad and rejoice in my Lord–and I hope many of you will join with me
in the happy occupation which will be helpful to yourselves.
Certainly, it will also be for the good of others. I think that
Believers do much harm if they allow their depressions of spirit to be
too conspicuous. There is another meaning besides the first one to that
text, "You, when you fast, anoint your head, and wash your face that
you appear not unto men to fast." But if you can get right out of your
sorrow and can actually rejoice in the Lord. And if you can so remember
Him as to be glad and rejoice in Him, you will allure many to the fair
ways of Christ which otherwise will be evilly spoken of if you go
mourning all your days! Come, you weak ones, come and feast on bread
that can make you strong! Come, you, whose eyes are red with weeping,
take a handkerchief that shall dry your tears and make your eyes as
bright as diamonds! Remember Christ and be glad and rejoice in Him!
Angels around the Throne of God can have no higher joy than this! And
they cannot enter so fully into it as you can, for He has not loved
them as He has loved you!–
"Never did angels taste above, Redeeming Grace and dying love."
This, then, is what I earnestly commend to you, this double resolve,
that we should all truly say to our Lord, "We will be glad and rejoice
in You, we will remember Your love more than wine." But, dear Friends,
we cannot carry out the resolve without the help of the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, let us breathe it unto the Lord in prayer and, as we tell
Him what we mean to do, let us, each one, add, "Draw me, O Lord. Then I
will run after You. Help me to come to You! Manifest Yourself to me and
then I will be glad and rejoice in You."
II. Now I want to go a step further and say that I think the resolve of
the text is A SUITABLE RESOLVE FOR THIS OCCASION–"We will be glad and
rejoice in You, we will remember Your love more than wine."
We are, most of us, coming to the Communion Table to eat of the bread
and to drink of the cup in remembrance of our Master's dying love.
Surely now is the hour, if ever in our lives, to be glad and rejoice in
Him and to remember Him, for the object of this supper is to
commemorate His dying love! It is idle and worse than idle, to come to
Christ's Table if you do not remember Him–what good can it do you? The
use that it is to the spectator is that you show Christ's death "till
He comes." But if there is not in the spectator any thought of that
death, of what use is the sight of the Table with its sacred vessels?
And if you, yourself, do not think of Christ, of what use to you are
the emblems of a forgotten or an unknown Lord? No, we are to
commemorate His death–so let us, in our hearts, rejoice in Him and
remember Him! Well did we sing just now–
"Jesus, when faith with fixed eyes,
Beholds Your wondrous Sacrifice,
Love rises to an ardent flame,
And we, all other hope disclaim!
Hence, O my Soul, a balsam flows
To heal your wounds, and cure your woes.
Immortal joys come streaming down,
Joys like His griefs, immense, unknown." Remember, next, that in coming
to this Communion Table we also commemorate the results of Christ's
death. One result of our Lord's death is that He gives food to His
people. His broken body has become bread for our souls, yes, it is
meat, indeed. His blood, which was shed for many for the remission of
sins, has become drink, indeed. By His death, Christ has given us life
and by the completion of His great redeeming work, and by His
ever-living intercession, He has given us bread and wine by which that
life may be sustained. He has finished it all and He has gone into
Glory to secure the results of His finished work. Sitting around His
Table, we are reminded of all this–the bread is ready, the cup is
filled. We have nothing to do to prepare the feast. All we have to do,
now, is to come and partake of it and feed to the fullest upon heavenly
food. So, dear Friends, if we come to this Table in a right spirit, we
must rejoice in our Lord and we must remember His love.
I think, also, that there is this further reason why we should rejoice
in our Lord and remember His love, because at this Table the
commemoration is made by our Lord to be a feast. They miss the meaning
of the Lord's Supper who kneel around what they call an, "altar." The
very point of the Supper is that it should be taken while sitting
around a table. It is not meant to be an adoration–it is a communion!
We come here that we may have fellowship with Him who sat at the table
with His disciples and made them to be His companions at His last
supper. Joy is becoming at a royal feast! What? Will you come to the
King's Table with a sorrowful countenances? Will you come sadly to see
what He has brought you? Now that He has prepared the bread and wine as
a feast for your souls, will you come here hanging your heads like
bulrushes? No, but let this be your resolution, "We will be glad and
rejoice in You, we will remember Your love more than wine."
Do kings make feasts? Do they lift high the flowing bowl? Are there
shouts of joy and exultation at their banquets and shall it be that
this world's poor vine, whose juice is often to men like the wine of
Gomorrah, shall bring even the semblance of joy superior to ours when
we drink of the wine that comes from the Vine of God and the clusters
that Christ has trod in the winepress? No! Higher, far, is your joy
than ever came to them that have made merry at earthly feasts!
More delightful, more intense, more real, more true be your hallowed
ecstasies than anything that wine or wealth can ever bring! "We will be
glad and rejoice in You, we will remember Your love more than wine." O
God, help us to carry out this resolution! It seems to me to be
specially right, proper and fit, when we come to this high festival of
the Church of God, that we should rejoice in the Lord and remember His
love!
Let us also recollect that when we come to the Table of our Lord, we
commemorate a very happy union. Our text speaks in the plural–"We will
be glad and rejoice in You, we will remember Your love more than wine."
I do not know how you feel, Brothers and Sisters, but I should not like
to go to Heaven alone. If nobody else will go on pilgrimage, Christian
must set out by himself and march along towards the Celestial City
until he finds a suitable fellow-pilgrim. But I like best to go with
Christiana, Mercy and the children–and as the company together. Though
I should enjoy fellowship with my Lord if I were His only loved one,
yet it greatly increases my joy as I look at the faces of many of you
whom I have known a score of years and with whom I have lived in such
happy union year after year! Many of you who were once "in the gall of
bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity," have been plucked, like
brands out of the burning, through the preaching of the Gospel in this
pulpit–and it seems such a happy thing for us to be communing together
around the Table of our Lord.
Some of you, my dear venerable Brothers and Sisters, will soon be
Home–come, we will be glad and rejoice in our Lord, will we not?
Before you go away from us, join us in another holy song! Give us
another of your patient, quiet, happy, restful looks! One dear Sister
went Home this morning, at twelve o'clock, while we were worshipping
here. I am sure that her spirit is now rejoicing before the Throne of
God and some of you will be going soon–but until you go, we will
rejoice and be glad together, will we not? We will still take the cup
of blessing at the Lord's Table, whatever our infirmities and sorrows
may be. And we will remember Him until we drink the new wine in our
Father's Kingdom above! And you men and women in the very midst of the
battle of life, with all your trials and struggles, we will stand
shoulder to shoulder, will we not? We are one in Christ and there is
between us a bond of union that never can be snapped! It binds us for
time and for eternity. We came to this Communion Table to eat and to
drink, not each one for himself, only, but each one in fellowship with
all the rest–and this ought to make us glad. If I am not glad about
myself, I will be glad to think that you are glad! If I have a heavy
burden to carry, I will be glad that you have not. And if you have a
burden and I have not, try to be glad that I have not one, or, if you
have one, and I have another, let us rejoice that we both have the same
God to help us to carry them and let us believe that as our days, so
shall our strength be!
What a joy it adds to this festival when we see the young folk coming
among us, the sons and daughters of God's people being brought into the
Church! Do you not notice how dear Mr. William Olney, whenever he prays
for a blessing upon our ministry, always breaks out into thanksgiving
to God that all his family have been brought to Christ? There are many
others of us who can praise the Lord for the same favor and it is a
great joy to us! Yes, Lord, we will remember Your love–husband and
wife, sons and daughters, and some of us can say grandchildren, too–we
will all come clustering around Your Table and, together, we will
remember Your sweet love to our fathers, to ourselves and to our
children! We cannot help remembering it and rejoicing and being glad in
it.
I must give you just one more thought upon this point. It does not
become us to gather at this Communion Table with a heavy heart when we
remember that it is not only a commemoration, but an anticipation. We
are to do this "till He comes." Did I not try, this morning, [Sermon
No. 1894, Volume 32–"The Two Appearings and the Discipline of Grace"
to sound the trumpet of His coming? It would not have startled me if He
had come while we were assembled and I was speaking of "the glorious
appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." Nor should it
startle any of you, if, in the dead of this very night, while you are
in your beds, you should hear the cry, "Behold, the Bridegroom comes!"
for He may come at any moment and He will come, "in such an hour as you
think not." Let us leap up at the remembrance of this gladsome hope!
We are coming to the Table, keeping up the memorial of our Lord's first
appearing in the fond hope and sure belief of that second appearing
when the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their
Father. Therefore, let us keep the feast with high hope. With joyous
notes, sound aloud the silver trumpet of the great jubilee and, as you
come to the Table, let your hearts be glad in the Lord, whose love you
especially remember at this hallowed festival!
III. I will close in a very few minutes, but I must dwell for a brief
space upon what I meant to make my third point concerning this double
resolve–LET US CARRY IT OUT. That ought always to be the practical
conclusion to every sermon–let us carry it out! We have said to our
Lord in the language of the text, "We will be glad and rejoice in You,
we will remember Your love more than wine." Very well, now let us carry
out this resolve.
"We will remember Your love." Dear Savior, what we have to remember is
Your love–Your love in old eternity, before the earth was, Your
prescient love, which–
"Saw us ruined in the Fall, Yet loved us notwithstanding all." We
remember the love of Your espousals when You did espouse Your people
unto Yourself and did resolve that, whatever might be the lot of Your
elect, You would share it with them. The Lord Jesus made up His mind
that He would be one with His Church–for this purpose He left His
Father that He might be one with His bride. I shall get into great
deeps if I go much further in speaking about Christ's love.
"We will remember Your love"–that love which, having once begun, has
never wavered, never diminished, never stopped–
"Love, so vast that nothing can bound! Love, too deep for thought to
sound! Love, which made the Lord of All Drink the wormwood and the
gall! Love, which led Him to the Cross, Bearing there unuttered loss!
Love, which brought Him to the gloom Of the cold and darksome tomb!
Love, which will not let Him rest Till His chosen all are blest! Till
they all for whom He died Live rejoicing by His side!"
We remember the love which Jesus bore in His heart right up into Glory
at the right hand of the Father–that love which is still as great as
when He hung on Calvary to redeem us unto Himself. The wonderful part
of all this to me is that it should be the love of such an One as
Christ is. That ever so Divine a Person should set His love on us is
very wonderful. I can understand my mother's love. I can understand my
child's love. I can understand my wife's love, but I cannot understand
Christ's love. Oh, Brothers and Sisters, we are nothings, we are
nobodies! Yet this glorious Everybody, this All in All, did actually
set His love upon us! Suppose that all the holy angels had loved us and
that all God's redeemed had loved us? All put together, it would be
only so many grains of dust that would not turn the scale! But Christ's
love is a mountain, no, more than all the mountains in the universe! I
know of nothing to be compared with it.
That is the first way in which we are to carry out this double
resolve–we are to remember and to rejoice in Christ's love.
Next, let each one of us say to Christ, "I will remember Your love to
me." Brothers and Sisters, I can believe in Christ's loving you, but
there are times when it seems a great mystery that He should ever have
loved me. I can truly say that, often, I have felt that if I might sit
at the feet of the poorest, meanest, least of God's servants and serve
them, I would count it a Heaven to do it if I did but feel sure of
Christ's love to my own soul. I see so many beauties in my Brothers and
my Sisters that I can admire the Grace of God in them, but, often, I
see and feel so many imperfections in myself that I can only wonder
that Christ should ever have loved me. I suppose that each of you feels
the same. I am sure that you do if you are in a right state of heart,
for, truth to tell, there is no beauty in any of us that He should
desire us–and there is no excellence in any of us that could have made
it worth His while to die for us. "God commends His love toward us, in
that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" "When we were yet
without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly"–and died
for us as ungodly. Come, then, will you not be glad and rejoice that
Christ should ever have loved you? Will you not be glad and rejoice,
and yet wonder all the while, that it should ever have been possible
for Him to draw you "with cords of a man, with bands of love," and
bring you into living, loving, everlasting union with Himself?
Still, even that is not all! The text does not merely speak about
Christ's love, and Christ's love to me, but it talks about Christ
Himself. "We will be glad and rejoice in You"–not only in His love,
but in Himself! Do try, dear Friends,
to let your thoughts dwell upon Christ, His complex Person, God and
Man, and all the wonders which lie wrapped up in Emmanuel, God With Us!
Your work, Lord, is fair, but the hand that worked the work is still
fairer. All Your designs of love are full of splendor, but what shall
we say of the mind that first gave creation to those designs? The
glance, the look of love which You have given me is blessed, but oh,
those eyes of Yours, those eyes which are brighter than the stars of
the morning! The Lord Jesus is better than everything that comes from
Him! His gifts are infinitely precious–then what must He, Himself, be?
Come, then, Beloved, and let us be glad and rejoice in Him, and let us
remember His love more than wine!
The text says, "we will remember," but some of you cannot remember
because you do not know. A man cannot remember what he has never heard
of, or seen, or known. But, Brothers and Sisters, let us remember what
we do know of Christ's love. I remember the first day I ever tasted of
His love consciously to myself. Ah, but I look back and think of the
rivers of love that came steaming down to me when I did not even know
that I was receiving them! And I remember that many days have passed
since first I could give back the glance of love in return for His love
to me. But oh, what His love to me since then has been! His love in
sickness, in sorrow, in labor, in backsliding, in prayer, in tears, in
unbelief, in faith, in varying and changing as many as the changes of
the moon! Yet, His love has always been the same. What a book some of
you could write concerning Christ's love to you if you had but a nimble
pen! What a story some of you could tell of Christ's love if some guest
could be detained while you told the wondrous story!
I sometimes think within myself that if all the interesting things that
are written in all the works of fiction could be put together, I could
surpass them all in the literal simple facts of a common life like
mine–and I believe that many of God's people here could say the same!
A Christian's life is full of interest. Last Thursday night I called
the life of a Christian a cluster of Kohinoors threaded on a string of
Divine faithfulness and I am sure that it is so!–
"Wonders of Grace to God belong, Repeat His mercies in your song."
Repeat His mercies as you remember them and be glad and rejoice in Him
even more than in the mercies that come from
Him!
In conclusion, I would say that I think the people of God, in gathering
to the Communion Table, should try to be glad and rejoice in their
Lord, and in nobody else–and to remember Him–and nothing else. Let
all be a blank except what Christ has written on your memory! Let all
be a blank except where that dear face appears–
"The head that once was crowned with thorns,"
but–
"Is crowned with Glory now."
Think only of Him! Put the glass to your eye and shut out all the rest
of the landscape–let that glass take nothing within its circle but
just the face of the Well-Beloved which we soon hope to see without a
cloud between!
God bless you, dear Friends! I wish that all of you understood this
Truth of God of which I have been speaking. Some of you do not–may the
Lord lead you to do so, for there is no life like that which is spent
at Jesus' feet, and no joy like that which comes from our dear Lord! I
wish you knew it. Believe on Him and you shall know it, and shall know
it at once. Amen.
HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"–797, 804, 819.
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM22.
This Psalm is a sort of window through which we can look into the heart
of our crucified Savior. We see all the external part of the
Crucifixion through the four windows of the Gospels, but this 22nd
Psalm brings us into the King's innermost chamber and here we perceive
the secret sufferings of His soul. You can very well conceive of the
Lord Jesus Christ, when He was on the Cross, beginning to speak in the
language of the first verse of this Psalm and closing with the last
words of the Psalm–"He has done this," which might properly be
interpreted, "It is finished." I have often read this Psalm with you,
especially on the evenings of our great Communion services. If we are
spared, we will read it together many more times. It is a very
wonderful Psalm–the Lord give us to understand it as we read it!!
Verse 1. My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far
from helping Me, and from the words of My roaring? That was the very
climax of our Lord's grief upon the Cross, that it was necessary that
the Father, Himself, should forsake Him. The penalty of sin is that God
must leave the man who has sin upon him even by imputation–and God
left this wondrous Man, this perfect Man, in whom was no sin, but upon
whom the sin of His people had been laid. He, "His own Self, bore our
sins in His own body on the tree" and, therefore, the Father must
forsake Him. But it was a bitter experience for our Savior that even
His prayers should not be heard when they had become so hoarse as to
resemble, rather, the roaring of a wounded beast than the articulate
utterance of a man–"Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the
words of My roaring?"
2, 3. O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You hear not; and in the
night season, and am not silent. But You are holy, O You that inhabit
the praises of Israel. Notice that the Lord Jesus, in His greatest
agony, does not impugn the justice of His Father's treatment. In His
bitterest sufferings He still adores the holiness of God–"You are
holy." It was because God was holy that His Son must suffer so–in
order to save the unholy.
4-6. Our fathers trusted in You: they trusted, and You did deliver
them. They cried unto You, and were delivered: they trusted in You, and
were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man–There is a little red
worm which seems to be nothing but a mass of blood–and the Savior
compares Himself in His agony to that tiny creature–"I am a worm, and
no man"–
6-8. A reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see
Me, laugh Me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head,
saying, He trusted on the lord that He would deliver Him: let Him
deliver Him, seeing He delighted in Him. What vinegar and gall that
mockery poured into the Savior's wounded heart! How these cruel words
must have stung His sensitive spirit! It was necessary that God should
leave Him while He was bearing His people's sin, but how shameful it
was that evil men should turn that stern necessity into a ground of
accusation against Him! Yet they did–they taunted Him with it–"He
trusted on the Lord that He would deliver Him: let Him deliver Him,
seeing He delighted in Him."
9,10. But You are He that took Me out of the womb: You did make Me hope
when I was upon My mother's breast. I was cast upon You from the womb:
You are My God from My mother's belly. Our Savior remembers His own
marvelous birth which differed from ours in some respects–and He
thinks of how the Father took care of Him, then. Did He not preserve
Him when Joseph and Mary fled into Egypt from the wrath of Herod? Was
there not a singular power that controlled the movements of the Wise
Men and warned them to return to their own country another way, so that
the Infant Christ should not be discovered and destroyed? Jesus on the
Cross remembers that remarkable preservation! And I suggest to you who
are getting old that you may draw comfort from the fact that when you
were infants and could not help yourselves, the Lord took care of you.
And if you come to a second childhood–if you should live to be as
helpless as when you were infants–the God who watched over you in the
beginning will watch over you to the end! Remember how He has said,
"Even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear;
even I will carry, and will deliver you."
11. Be not far from Me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
Peter, James, John and all the disciples had fled. "There is none to
help." The women could weep with pitying eyes and sympathetic hearts,
but they could not help. "There is none to help."
12. Many bulls have compassed Me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset Me
round. There stood the chief priests and the rulers, and the Roman
soldiers with their massive bulk and brute strength.
13. They gaped upon Me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring
lion. There was nothing but cruelty and spite and fury all round the
tender heart of that lonely Sufferer. Ah, me, was there ever sorrow
like unto His sorrow?
14. I am poured out like water, and all My bones are out of joint. This
was caused by the rough dashing of the Cross into the ground when they
lifted it up and plunged it into its place.
14. My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of My bowels. It
was a living death, a deadly life. Christ's very heart, which is the
center of life, had become dissolved by pain and weakness and sorrow.
15. My strength is dried up like a potsherd and My tongue cleaves to My
jaws; and You have brought Me into the dust of death. The terrible
death-thirst was upon Him through the fever generated by His wounds.
16. For dogs have compassed Me: this assembly of the wicked have
enclosed Me: they pierced My hands and My feet. The common multitude,
with ribald jest and hateful mockery, stood there taunting Him. He was
encircled by them–like a poor hunted stag surrounded by the hounds.
17. I may count all My bones: they look and stare upon Me. They stood
mocking at His nakedness, jesting at His emaciated form.
18- 19. They part My garments among them, and cast lots upon My
vesture. But be You not far from Me, O LORD. That is still the very
center of our Savior's suffering, so He turns His pleading in that
direction. He does not ask that the dogs may be called off, nor that
the bulls may be driven away–His cry is, "Be not You far from Me, O
Lord."
19- 21. O My Strength, hasten You to help Me. Deliver My soul from the
sword; My darling from the power of the dog. Save Me from the lion's
mouth: for You have heard Me from the horns of the unicorns. He
remembers former days wherein God had helped Him, and He prays that the
Lord will help Him still, and bring Him safely through this terrible
trial, as, indeed, He did! Now the tone of the Psalm changes. A gleam
of sunlight plays across the scene. The agony is over, the life is
poured out, and now the Savior begins to contemplate the result of His
suffering. Think, dear Brothers and Sisters, how the Lord thought of
You! He says–
22. I will declare Your name unto My brethren. In the midst of the
congregation will I praise You. The risen Christ is in the midst of us!
He has come here to tell us of His Father's love. He has told it to us
by His death and now He bids us praise the Lord and He, Himself, leads
our song! This is the reward of His passion, that He and His brethren
should bless and praise the Lord forever and ever!
23, 24. He that fears the LORD, praise Him; all You, the seed of Jacob,
glorify Him; and fear Him, all You the seed of Israel. For He has not
despised nor abhorred the affliction of the Afflicted, neither has He
hid His face from Him; but when He cried unto Him, He heard. Is not
this delightful? Your Lord has gone through the black darkness and has
come out into the Light of God–and when your turn comes to go through
the darkness, you, too, shall come out into the Light even as He did!
Therefore, rejoice in His name! If the Head has conquered, the members
shall conquer, too. You shall all share in your Savior's joy as you are
partakers of His sufferings.
25, 26. My praise shall be of You in the great congregation: I will pay
My vows before them that fear Him. The meek shall eat and be satisfied.
He thought of you, poor, timid, trembling ones! You who are humbled
before God under a sense of your sin. Because He died, because He
accomplished your redemption, you "shall eat and be satisfied."
26, 27. They shall praise the LORD that seek Him: Your heart shall live
forever. All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the
LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before You. See
what solace Christ derives from the spread of the faith, the conquest
of the world by His death!
28-30. For the Kingdom is the LORD'S: and He is the governor among the
nations. All they that are fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all
they that go down to the dust shall bow before Him: and none can keep
alive his own soul. A seed shall serve Him; it shall be accounted to
the Lord for a generation. This is in accordance with Isaiah's
prophecy–"When You shall make His soul an offering for sin, He shall
see His seed."
31. They shall come–The passion of Christ shall work for a certain
deliverance for His people. What He has purchased, He shall surely
have–"They shall come"–
31. And shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be
born, that He has done this. Or, "it is finished." When our Lord had
uttered these words, "He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost."