The Sealed Hand–a Winter Sermon
(No. 3289)
A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1912.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
"He seals up the hand of every man; that all men may know His work."
Job 37:7.
When the Lord seals up a man's hand, he is unable to perform his labor.
The Lord has an objective in this, namely, "that all men may know His
work." When they cannot do their own work, they are intended to observe
the works of God. This is a fact which I fear many of us have never
noticed. When the ground is hardened into iron by the frost. When the
land lies deep beneath the snow. When the ox rests in the stall and the
servants warm their hands at the fire, then the farmer's hand is sealed
up. But I fear the Divine Purpose is not often heeded. As you look
through the frosted pane upon the driving snow, do you say to yourself,
"God has taken me off from my own work and given me a holiday which He
would have me turn into a holy day–let me now turn my thoughts to the
Lord's great works in Nature, Providence and Grace. Shut out from my
calling, I am also shut in to think of my God and of His work"?
To the most of us, it happens that at sundry times we are set aside
from our ordinary service–and it is well if we improve the hour. One
is never absent from his desk. Another is regularly behind the counter.
A third is always diligent in his travelling but, sooner or later,
there comes a day of pain and weakness–when the usual course of life
is interrupted and the busiest man lies still. In the sickbed for weeks
and months, God seals up the active hand, and thus He presents to the
busy a quiet season for reflection! In France, they call the hospital,
"the House of God," and it is well when it becomes so. The man who will
not think of God if he can help it, while he is busy in the world, is,
by sickness blessed with time for consideration and, being set aside
from turmoil, he is invited to rise above his engrossing cares! The
Great Father seems to say, "Lie there alone. Lie awake through the
night-watches and think of your past ways and what they lead to. Listen
to the tick of the clock and mark the flight of time till you number
your days and apply your heart unto wisdom. Your own work you cannot
touch. Now, therefore, think of the work of your God and Savior till
you obtain the blessing which comes of it." This is the design of
sickness and inability to follow our calling! Thus is our hand sealed
from its occupation that our heart may be unsealed towards God, Heaven
and eternal things!–
"It needs our hearts be weaned from earth.
It needs that we be driven
By loss of every earthly stay,
To seek our joys in Heaven."
It is clear that God can easily seal up the hand of man if he uses his
strength in rebellion or folly, for He has other seals besides
sickness. When the wicked are determined to carry out a plan which is
not according to His mind, He can baffle them. See the people gathering
on the plain of Shinar, bringing together brick and slime that they may
build a tower whose lofty height shall mark the center of a universal
monarchy! What does God do? By simply confounding their language, he
seals every man's hand! No storm, or flood, or earthquake could have
more effectually caused the workmen to desist. Look through the
loopholes of retreat tonight upon this wicked world and see men urgent
with schemes which to them appear admirable. If they are not for God's
Glory, He that sits in Heaven laughs! The Lord has them in derision!
With a word He seals up their hand so that it loses all its cunning and
their purpose falls to the ground! Sometimes He closes up the hands of
His inveterate enemies with the cold seal of death. Walk over the place
where Sennacherib's hosts had pitched their tents. They spread
themselves upon the face of the earth and threatened to devour Judah
and Jerusalem–yes to quickly swallow them up–but "the angel of death
spread his wings on the blast," and the sleepers never again rose to
blaspheme Jehovah! They lie with their weapons under their heads, but
they cannot grasp them! Bows,
spears and chariots remain as a spoil to the armies of the Lord! Let us
never, therefore, be disturbed by the vaunting of the adversaries of
Jehovah! He can seal up their hands and then the men of might are
captives! "The Lord reigns"–
"Though sinners boldly join,
Against the Lord to rise,
Against His Christ combine,
The Anointed to despise.
Though earth disdain,
And Hell engage,
Vain is the rage–
Their counsel vain."
We will leave that part of the subject and handle the text in another
way. Here is, first, a word to Christian workers. And when we have so
expounded it, we shall turn to struggling Believers panting for
victory–for with both these classes there are seasons when their hands
are sealed. Thirdly, we shall speak to such as are toiling after
self-salvation for it is a happy thing when such an hour comes to them,
also, and they cease from their own work and know the work of the Lord!
I. First, then, I speak to YOU WHO ARE GOD'S PEOPLE and have grown into
strong men in Christ Jesus.
Do not be surprised if sometimes your Master seals up your hand by a
consciousness of unfitness. You may have preached for years and yet
just now you feel as if you could never preach again. Your cry is, "I
am shut up and cannot come forth." The brain is weary, the heart is
faint and you are on the brink of saying, "I will speak no more in the
name of the Lord." Your seed basket is empty and your plow is
rusty–when you get to the granary, it seems to be locked against you.
What are you to do? No message from God drops sweetly into your soul
and how can your speech among the people distil as the dew? Perhaps
some of you who have lately begun to serve the Lord wonder that it
should ever be so with us older workers. You will not wonder long, for
it will also happen to you! When a farmer sows his field with a seeder,
the drill has no aches and pains, for it has no nerves and nothing to
prevent the seed shaking out of it with precise regularity. But our
great Lord never sows His fields with iron seeders. He uses men and
women like ourselves, who are liable to headaches, heartaches and all
sorts of miseries and, therefore, cannot sow as they could wish.
Comrades in the Lord's work, it is essential that we learn our own
inability! It is profitable to feel that without our Lord we can do
noth-ing–but that the Lord can do very well without us! If we cannot
break the clods, His frost is doing it. If we cannot water the soil,
His snow is saturating it. When man is paralyzed, God is not even
hindered. When we feel our own weakness, it is that we may know the
Lord's work and comprehend that whatever understanding we have, He gave
us. Whatever thought or utterance we have, He worked it in us and if we
have any power among men to deliver the precious Gospel of Christ, He
has anointed us to that end. Therefore, if we have received, we may not
boast as if we had not received! It is a great blessing for us to be
emptied of self that God may be All-in-All, for then our infirmities
cease to be drawbacks and rise into qualifications through Divine
Grace! This has a world of comfort in it.
Sometimes the Christian worker's hand is sealed, not by his own
incompetence, but by the hardness of the hearts he has to deal with. Do
we not often cry, "I cannot make any impression upon that man! I have
tried in several ways, but I cannot find a vulnerable place in him. I
cannot get the sword of Truth to strike at him"? Have you never mourned
that you could not touch those children–they were so volatile and
frivolous? Have you not been ready to weep because so many men are so
coarse, so drunk and so reckless? Have you not groaned, "Lord, I cannot
get at those wealthy people! They are educated and sneer at my
mistakes. And they are so eaten up with the conceit of their own
position that they will not come to You as the poor do, and receive
Your salvation. Truly, my hand is sealed"? This is all meant to drive
you to your God in prayer, crying, "It is time for You, Lord, to work!"
Oh, for that word which is like a hammer, breaking the rock in pieces!
Oh, that the fire would melt and save the sinner!
Another thing which often seals the hand of the worker and leaves it
maimed and bleeding, is the apostasy of any who were thought to be
converts. Oh, how we rejoiced over them! Perhaps just a little, behind
the door, we thought how wonderfully well we labored to have such
converts. As we saw them at worship and remembered that they were once
drunks and swearers, we almost whispered that a notable miracle had
been worked by us. Ah me, how light-fingered we are! How ready to rob
God of His Glory to clothe self with it! What did the Lord do? He let
our precious convert go reeling home and he that prayed at the Prayer
Meeting was heard cursing! Thus all our weaving was unraveled. Then we
wept and cried, "We have accomplished nothing at all! We have only bred
a generation of hypocrites! They only need to
be tempted and they go back again! Alas for us!" We shall return to our
work with more tenderness and humility, with more prayer and faith–and
looking alone to God we shall see His hand outstretched to save! We
shall wonder that we have not gone back, ourselves, and shall be
prepared to sing Jude's doxology, "Now unto Him that is able to keep
you from falling, and to present you faultless before the Presence of
His Glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory
and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen." When the
Lord seals up your hand in any way, then, dear Christian worker,
consider God's work, and call Him into the field–
"Arm of the Lord, awake, awake!
Your power unconquerable take.
Your strength put on, assert Your might
And triumph in the dreadful fight!
Why do You tarry, mighty Lord?
Why slumbers in its sheath Your sword?
Oh, awaken for Your honor's sake–
Arm of the Lord, awake, awake!
Hasten then, but come not to destroy.
Mercy is Yours–Your crown, Your joy!
Their hatred quell, their pride remove,
But melt with Grace, subdue with love." Some think the text teaches
that when God seals up a man's hand, it is that he may know his own
work, that is, that he may perceive what poor, imperfect work it
is–that he may form a correct estimate of it and not glory in it–that
he may observe the scantiness of the sphere of human action and mourn
how ineffective, how despicable, how feeble man's efforts are apart
from God's power. It is a great blessing to know our own work and to be
humble, but still it is a higher blessing to know the Lord's work and
to be confident in Him. O Brothers and Sisters, we must be nothing, or
the Lord will not use us! If the axe vaunts itself against him that
fells trees therewith, he will fling that axe away. If we sacrifice to
our own net, the Great Fisherman will never drag the sea with us again
till He has made us more fit for use. Oh, to be nothing! To lie at His
feet and then, full of His power, because emptied of our own, to move
forward to victory! May the Lord work in us to will and to do of His
good pleasure–then shall we work out a glorious destiny to His praise!
II. This Scripture equally applies to THE CASE OF THE STRUGGLING
BELIEVER.
The man is earnestly striving. Look at him! He is seeking to pray. I
sometimes ask young people, "Do you pray?" They answer, "We could not
live without prayer." "Can you always pray alike?" I thank God that I
usually receive the answer, "No, Sir. We wish we could always be
earnest." Just so. A steam engine can always do its work with equal
force, but a living man cannot always pray. A mere actor can perform
the externals of devotion at any time, but the real suppliant has his
variations. We have all read of the preacher who, while preaching, used
to cry most unaccountably when others were untouched. The reason was
that he had put in the margin of his manuscript, "Cry here," and this
he had done in the quiet of his study, without considering whether the
passage would really produce tears. A man of genuine emotion cannot
make himself cry at say, half-past seven in the morning and ten at
night. Mighty prevailing prayer is an effect of the inward impulses of
the Spirit of God and the Spirit blows where He wishes. We cannot
command His influence. We ought always to pray most when we think we
cannot pray at all! Mark that paradox. When you feel disinclined to
pray, let it be a sign to you that prayer is doubly necessary! Pray for
prayer! Yet there are times with me, and I suppose with you, when at
the Throne of Grace I mourn because I cannot mourn, and feel wretched
because all feeling has fled. The Lord has sealed up my hand! But that
is that I may learn anew how His Spirit helps my infirmities and that I
am powerless in supplication till He quickens me. We could as easily
create a world as present a fervent prayer without the Spirit of God!
We need to have this written upon our hearts, for only so shall we
offer those inwrought supplications which the Lord hears with delight.
Look at the struggling Believer, next, when he tries to learn the Truth
of God. For instance, in reading the Scriptures, he pants to know the
meaning of them. Did you never try to dig into a passage and find
yourself unable to make headway? Fetch a commentary! Do you find that
it leaves your difficulty untouched? Have you not begun at the wrong
end? Would it not be better to pray your way into the textand when you
have got somewhat through the rind of it, will it not be well to
imitate a mouse when he meets with cheese and eats his way to the
center? Work away at the passage by prayer and experience and you will
tunnel into the secret! Yet you will at times find yourself lost among
grand Truths of God and quite unable to cut your way through the forest
of Doctrines because your understanding seems to have lost its edge.
God has sealed up your hand that now you may go to Him for instruction,
and clearly so that not in books nor in teachers, but in His Holy
Spirit is the light by which the Word of Truth is to be understood by
the soul! He seals up our hands that we may sit at His feet–
"Light in Your light oh may we see, Your Grace and mercy prove,
Revived, and cheered, and blessed by Thee, Spirit of peace and love."
The struggling Believer may have set himself to watch against certain
sin. Possibly he has enjoyed his morning's devotion and he goes
downstairs resolved to be patient, whatever provocation may occur, for
he wept last night over the evil done by a quick temper. He converses
cheerfully and yet, before the breakfast is over, the lion is roused
and he is in the wars again! The poor man murmurs to himself, "What
will become of me? This hot temper runs away with me." Do not excuse
yourself but still learn from your own folly. Does not the Lord thus
let you see your own weakness more and more till you gird on His
strength and overcome it? Remember, it must be conquered! You must not
dare to be the slave of a fierce temper, or, indeed, of any sin! If the
Son make you free, you shall be free, indeed! And it is His
emancipating hand that you need within. Sanctification is the work of
the Spirit of God–only He can accomplish it–and it is for you to cry
unto the Strong for strength!
Perhaps the struggle is of yet another kind. You long to grow in Grace.
This is a matter worthy of the utmost desire and labor, and yet, as a
matter of fact, neither plants nor souls actually grow through
conscience effort. "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
they toil not, neither do they spin." Children of God, when they grow,
grow up into Christ, not by agonies and excitements, but by the quiet
force of the inward life renewed from day to day by the Holy Spirit! We
have heard some true saints complain that they felt as if they were
rather growing downward than upward, for they feel worse instead of
better. Thus do many of the plants of our garden grow–and we are
joyful that it is so–for we need not the useless top growth, but we
prize the root! To grow downward in humility may be the best possible
growth–the hand sealed may be bringing us more spiritual profit than
the hand at work!
III. I might thus enlarge, but it would come to the same thing and,
therefore, I leave the struggling Christians to lend a hand to THE
SELF-RIGHTEOUS, whom I would gladly help into a ditch and leave there
till the Almighty One shall come to take them out!
If we believe their own statements, there are a great many very good
people in this world. True, the Bible says, "There is none that does
good; no, not one," but that is an old-fashioned sort of book! Good men
are plentiful as blackberries! I hear certain of them bearing witness
that they are quite as good as those who make a profession of religion
and, in fact, rather better! They are so good that they do not even
profess to trust the Lord Jesus Christ! Now, you excessively good
people, I am right glad when the Lord seals up your hands so that you
cannot persevere in your fine doings and are compelled to try the true
way of getting to Heaven!
Sometimes that sealing up comes by a discovery that the Law of God is
spiritual, and that the service of God is a matter of the heart. Here
is a good woman! She says, "I never stole a penny. I always pay my
debts. I am sober, kind and industrious. I thank God I am not a gossip,
or proud, or idle, as so many are." Is she not a superior person? But
observe a change! She hears a sermon, or reads the Bible and finds that
external goodness is nothing unless there is goodness in the
heart–unless there is love to God and love to men–unless there is the
new birth and a consequent total and radical change of nature
manifested by a simple reliance upon Christ! Is this the same woman?
How different her manner! How changed the tone of her talk! Hear her
exclaim, "I am utterly lost! I had no idea that God required the heart
and judged our thoughts and desires. What searching Truths! A look can
make me guilty of adultery. Anger without a cause is murder!" If this
fact comes with power to the heart–the hand is sealed and all hope of
salvation by works is gone! Oh, that this would happen to all
self-justifiers! Oh, that the Lord would wean them from self, that they
might know His work, the work of Christ who satisfied the Law for all
His people, that they might be made the righteousness of God in Him!
Sometimes an actual sin has let in light upon the sinfulness of the
heart I knew a young man who, in his own esteem, was as fine a fellow
as ever worked in a shop. He prided himself that he had never told a
lie, nor been dishonest, nor a drunk, nor loose in his life–and if the
Savior had said to him that he must keep the commandments, he would
have rep-
lied, "All these have I kept from my youth up." In pushing a fellow
workman, he upset an oilcan. It happened to have been upset before, and
the master had spoken strongly about the careless waste. The master,
coming along on this occasion, called out, "Who upset that can?"" The
young man said that he did not know, though he himself was the
offender. That passed away. No further question was asked, but in a
moment he said to himself, "I have told a lie! I never would have
believed myself capable of such meanness." His beautiful card house
tumbled down! The bubble of his reputation burst and he said to
himself, "Now I understand what Mr. Spurgeon means by the depravity of
the heart. I am a good-for-nothing creature! What must I do to be
saved?" No doubt outward sin has often revealed the secret power of
evil in the heart. The leprosy has come out upon the skin and so it has
been seen to be in the system. Thus is pride hidden from man–and his
hand is sealed up that he may look for mercy from God, and live!
Yes, I have known God seal up some men's hands by a sense of spiritual
inability, so that they have said, "I cannot pray. I thought I prayed
every morning and night, but I now see that it is not prayer at all. I
cannot now praise God. I used to sit in the choir and sing as sweetly
as any of them, but I was singing to my own glory, and not unto the
Lord. I fear I have been deceiving myself and setting up my
righteousness instead of Christ's–and that is the worst form of
idolatry. I have dishonored God and I have crucified Christ by claiming
to myself the power of self-salvation. I have un-Christed Christ and
counted His blood to be a superfluous thing." When a man has come to
that, then he–
"Casts his deadly doing down,
Down at Jesus' feet–
To stand in Him, in Him alone,
Gloriously complete!"
"What?" cries yonder friend, "Would you not have us do good works?"
Yes, a host of them! But not to thereby save yourself! You must do them
becauseyou are saved! You know what children do when they are little
and silly–they go into their fathers garden and pick handfuls of
flowers, and make a garden. "A pretty, pretty garden," so they say.
Wait till tomorrow morning and every flower will be withered and there
will be no pretty garden at all, for their flowers have no roots! That
is what you do when you cultivate good works beforefaith–it is a
foolish, fruitless business. Repent of sin and believe in Jesus, for
these are the roots of good works! And, though at first they look like
black bulbs with no beauty in them, yet out of them shall come the
rarest flowers in the garden of holiness! Get away with your good
works! Get away with your salvation of yourself! This is all proud
fancy and falsehood. Why did God send a Savior if you need no saving?
What need of the Cross if you can be saved by your own works? Why did
Jesus bleed and die if your own merits are sufficient? Come, you guilty
ones! Come, you weary! Come, you whose hands are sealed, so that you
can do nothing more–take the work of Christ and be saved by it at
once!
A young Sister who I saw just now, told me how a friend helped her to
see the way of salvation. She could not believe in Jesus Christ because
she did not feel herself to be all that she wanted to be. But the
friend said to her, "Suppose I were to give you this Bible for a
present." "Yes." "Would it not be yours as soon as you took it? It
would not depend upon whether you were good or not, would it?" "No."
"Well, then," the friend replied, "the Lord God has given Jesus Christ
to you as a free gift–and if you take him by faith, He is immediately
yours, whoever you may be." The case stands just so. Accept Jesus as
the free gift of God to you and you are saved! And being saved, you
will work with all your might to show your gratitude to God your
Savior!
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM94.
This is the prayer of a man of God in great trouble, standing out for
God in an evil day, when the Lord's people were greatly oppressed, and
the honor of God was being trampled in the mire. The prayer wells up
from an oppressed heart struggling against great difficulty.
Verse 1. LORD God–"O Jehovah, El." Men of God in trouble delight to
call upon the name of the Lord. His very name is a stronghold to them!
The Infinite Jehovah, the strong God. EL. "O Lord God"–
1. To whom vengeance belongs; O God, to whom vengeance belongs, show
Yourself'Vengeance does not belong to us! It is not right for any
private individual to attempt to avenge himself. But vengeance does
belong to the just Judge
who will mete out to all the due reward of evil or of good. Hence, my
appeal is to the Court of King's Bench, or higher still, to the King,
Himself! "O God, to whom vengeance belongs, show Yourself." When false
Doctrine abounds, only God can put it down. All the efforts of the
faithful will be futile apart from Him.
2-4. Lift up Yourself You judge of the earth: render a reward to the
proud. LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked
triumph? How long shall they utter and speak hard things? And all the
workers of iniquity boast themselves?That expression, "How long?"
repeated three times, is very sorrowful. It seems to get into a kind of
howling or wailing. But a child of God, when he sees things going wrong
with his Lord's Kingdom, must grow somewhat impatient and he cries out
to His God, "How long? How long? How long will You bear it?" The very
triumphs of the wicked and the hard things they say, with which they
seem to bubble over like fountains, (for that is the force of the term
"utter and speak" used here), stir the heart of the man of God to its
very depths! He gets alone and grieves before God. And out of a full
heart he thus cries to Him, "How long shall they utter and speak hard
things? And all the workers of iniquity boast themselves?"
5. They break in pieces Your people, O LORD There is a strong plea in
that declaration, for the Lord of Hosts says to His people, He that
touches you, touches the apple of My eye." In days of persecution the
saints can pray in this fashion, "They break in pieces Your people,
Jehovah."
5, 6. And afflict Your heritage. They slay the widow and the stranger,
and murder the fatherless. This made the appeal still stronger, for God
is "a Father of the fatherless, and a Judge of the widows."
7. Yet they say, The LORD shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob
regard it Yet this very God of Jacob came to the troubled Patriarch at
Jabbok and blessed him there. And He said to heathen kings, "Touch not
My Anointed, and do my Prophets no harm"–so can it be true that He
does not see and regard what the wicked do to His people? They dare to
say so, and render themselves the more brazen in their sin because of
this, their infidelity!
8. Understand, you brutish among the people. Here the pleader turn into
a Prophet and, after having spoken to God, he now speaks to men.
Understand, you boors," for so the word may be rendered, "You swine
among the people."
9. And you fools, when will you be wise? He that planted the ear, shall
He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He
not see? [See Sermon #2118, Volume 35–THE PLANTER OF THE EAR MUST
HEAR.] You say that God does not see, that He does not regard–but how
can that be? You are mad to talk so! He that gave men the sense of
hearing–cannot He, Himself, hear? He that gave them sight–cannot He
see?–
"Shall He who, with transcendent skill,
Fashioned the eye and formed the ear–
Who modeled Nature to His will–
Shall He not see? Shall He not hear?
Vain hope! His eyes at once survey
Whatever fills Creation's space–
He sees our thoughts, and marks our ways,
He knows no bounds of time and place."
10. He that chastises the heathen, shall not He correct?He judges the
nations–read the Book of Providence and see how He deals out justice
to nation after nation! So shall He not also correct the individual
man?
10. He that teaches man knowledge–If you look at your Bibles, you will
see that the translators have put in here the words, "shall not He
know." They are printed in italics because they are not in the
original. The original is very abrupt–it is as if the Psalmist had
said, "There, I am tired of arguing with you. You can draw your own
inference. I will leave you to do that for yourselves. Fools as You
are, I need not draw the inference for you." "He that teaches man
knowledge." Does man really know anything unless God teaches him? Adam
was taught of God at the first–and every particle of true science that
man knows has been imparted by God! I do not say that God is the Author
of the science of today–much of that evidently comes from man–but all
true knowledge is imparted to us by God. "He that teaches man
knowledge"–do you think–do you dream that He does not Himself know
everything?
10, 11. Shall not He know? The LORD knows the thoughts of man, that
they are vanity He knows that men are vanity, that they are, according
to one translation, a vapor! The men themselves are but a vapor, but as
for their thoughts, their intellect, their power to think, that of
which many men are most proud–what does God think of these? What a
wonderful thing "modern thought" seems to be! But listen to this, "The
Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are
nothing." Vanity is a negation, it is a bubble–a thing puffed up that
has no substance in it–"The Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they
are vanity."
12. Blessed is the man whom You chasten, O LORD, and teach him out of
Your Law [See Sermon #2374, Volume 40–BLESSED
DISCIPLINE.] These are two things that go well together-a rod
and a book. No man ever learns much without both rod and book. "Blessed
is the man whom You chasten." The Book is never properly understood
without some touches of the rod, but the Book must also be there–"and
teach" him out of Your Law, "for if it were all rod and no Book, there
would be plenty of scars, but there would be no learning! Have you got
the two together, my dear Friend? Have you been of late very much with
the Book in a nook, and very much with the rod upon your bed? Well,
then, you are a blessed man, for the Psalmist says, "Blessed is the man
whom You chasten, O Lord, and teach him out of Your Law."
13. That You may give him a rest from the days of activity, until the
pit is dug for the wicked. In these days, the quiet virtues are not
prized as much as they ought to be. Men are always busy–they must be
ever on the trot–but blessed is the man who is so taught by the Book
and by the rod that he comes to a holy quietism and learns to rest! The
man or woman most rested is the best worker. He who knows how to sit at
Jesus' feet, knows how to work for Jesus better than if he were
continually running about and getting cumbered with much service. We
never learn the secret of this rest by the Book, alone, or by the rod,
alone–the rod and the book togetherteach us to rest from the days of
adversity. They teach us not to lay the present too much to heart, not
to fret because of things as they are today, but to think of what is to
be in that Day when the righteous shall be rewarded, and when the
Mighty Hunter shall have trapped His adversary and ours–when the pit
shall be dug for the wicked and Satan's power shall be forever
destroyed!
14. For the LORD will not cast off His people. He may cast them down,
but He will never cast them off!
14. Neither will He forsake His inheritance. Even men will not give up
their inheritance. This is especially the case among the Jews! You
remember how Naboth would not sell his inheritance–he would sooner
die. And the Lord will not forsake His inheritance–there is a sacred
condition upon His people that never can be broken–and He will never
give them up.
15. But judgment shall return unto righteousness: and all the upright
in heart shall follow it The wicked may be the upper spokes of the
wheel just now, but they will be the lower spokes before long! The
Truth of God may be in the mire, today, but she shall be upon the
Throne tomorrow! The revolutions of the wheels of Providence produce
strange changes. Wait. Work. Watch. For the Lord will set things right
in His own good time.
16. Who will rise up for me against the evildoer or who will stand up
for me against the workers of iniquity?The Psalmist appeals for
helpers, but he gets no response from man. And sometimes the man of God
will have to stand alone– and that can be quite an education for him.
Blessed is he who has learned to hang on the bare arm of God–he is
better off without his earthly friends than he was with them! Here is
the answer to the Psalmist's question–
17. Unless the LORD had been my help, my soul had almost dwelt in
silence. You may be one of the best of God's servants and yet that may
be your experience. Here is another piece of testimony in which many of
us can join–
18. When I said, My foot slips, Your mercy, O Lord, held me up. "My
foot had slipped from under me. I was down. But then, even then, You
did put underneath me Your everlasting arms. 'Your mercy, O Lord, held
me up.'"
19. In the multitude of my thoughts within me Your comforts delight my
soul [See Sermon #883, Volume 15–multiudinous
THOUGHTS AND SACRED COMFORTS.] "My thoughts"-so some read
this verse–"seem intertwisted and interlaced like the many branches of
a tree. I cannot make them out–they are in such a tangle." But the
bird has learned to sit among the branches and sing, "Your comforts
delight my soul." There are thoughts of grief, thoughts of fear,
thoughts of disappointment, thoughts of desertion, thoughts of a broken
heart–all sorts of thoughts, but God's comforts come in and delight
the soul! You know what it is–do you not?–to be cast down, but not
destroyed? To be troubled, and yet to be happy? "As sorrowful," says
Paul, "yet always rejoicing." Whereupon an old Divine remarks that it
is "as sorrowful"–quasi sorrowful–but it is not "as always
rejoicing." There is no "quasi" to that, but there is a real joy in the
midst of a seeming sorrow! "In the multitude of my thoughts within me
Your comforts delight my soul."
20. Shiall thee throne of iniquity have fellowship with You, which
frames mischief by a Law?Lord, are You on their side? Oh, no, and as
You are not on their side, I care not who is! So long as You will not
aid iniquity or help wrongdoing, I will, by Your Grace, fight the
battle through.
21, 22. They gather themselves together against the soul of the
righteous and condemn the innocent blood. But the LORD is my defense;
and my God is the rock of my refuge. He gets away unto his God as he
had been accustomed to hide in the cave of Adullam out of reach of his
foes! And then he sits down in peace to sing–
23. And He shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them
off in their own wickedness; yes the LORD our God shall cut them off.