Three Blessings of the Heavenly Charter

Three Blessings of the Heavenly Charter

(No. 2314)

INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, JUNE 25, 1893.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, JUNE
16, 1889.

"You have granted me life and favor, and Your visitation has preserved
my spirit." Job 10:12.

IT is well, sometimes, to sit down and take a grateful review of all
that God has done for us, and with us, from our first day until now. We
must not be like hogs under the oak, that eat the acorns but never
thank the tree, or the Lord who made it grow. We must not receive the
dew and yet never think of the Heaven from which it comes. To be
ungrateful is to be unmanly–to be ungrateful to God is to commit high
treason against the majesty of His goodness. I think that an hour would
be well spent, by any person here, in sitting quietly and going over
his autobiography. Turn over the pages of your diary–if you have none
written, turn over the pages of your memory–and think of all that God
has done for you from the day when you hung upon your mother's breast
until the present moment–

"Streams of mercy, never ceasing,

Call for songs of loudest praise." But God does not hear the songs
ofpraise because we let the streams of mercy glide by unnoticed. Far
too often, we–

"Let His mercies lie

Forgotten in unthankfulness,

And without praises die."

We do not even put a tombstone over their graves, but let them lie as
dead things, uncared for, forgotten, out of mind.

If there is any time when it is unlikely for us to think of God's
mercies, but when it would be especially wise for us to do so. If there
is one time more unlikely than another, it is when we are in great
trouble. Here is poor Job, covered with sore boils, sitting on a
dunghill, scraping himself with a bit of a broken pot. His children are
dead. His property destroyed and even his wife not giving him a word of
comfort–and his friends acting in a most unfriendly manner. Now it is
that he talks to his God and says, "You have granted me life and favor,
and Your visitation has preserved my spirit." You are very ill–think
of the time when you were well. You are poor–remember when you washed
your feet in milk and your steps with butter–and had more than heart
could wish. Friends have forsaken you–remember when you had plenty of
friends.

"Oh!" you say, "that will be rubbing salt into the wound." No, no, I
trust not. You will remember that you were not always unhappy, that you
were not always full of pain. God has spared your life and given you
many favors. If you do not feel that you can bless Him for the present
moment, yet forget not to bless Him for the past. And when you once
begin to do that, you will soon find that your praise will overlap the
past and cover the present–if it does not even run into the future!
Only begin to praise God and you will find that he who praises God for
mercy will never be long without a mercy for which to praise Him! I
therefore invite those of you who are sad, tonight, to think of God's
past goodness and, as I trust that the larger proportion here will not
be found in that condition, I urge you to lead the way in taking a
happy retrospect, tonight, of all that God has done for you in
Providence and Grace.

Job gives us, here, a charter with three blessings in it–"You have
granted me life and favor, and Your visitation has preserved my
spirit." These are choice favors! As we dwell upon them, may our hearts
gratefully bless God for all that He has done for us!

I. The first blessing of this heavenly charter is LIFE–"You have
granted me life."

Well, I think that we ought to thank God that we have lived at all. I
know the pessimist version of the psalm of life is that, "'Tis
something better not to be." Perhaps it would have been something
better if that gentleman had not been–

better, I should think, for his wife and family if they had not had to
live with such a miserable creature! But the most of us thank God for
our being, as well as for our well-being. We count it something not to
be stones, or plants, or "dumb, driven cattle." We are thankful to be
intelligent beings with powers of thought and capable of mental and
spiritual enjoyment. Truly, O Lord, it is no small thing to be, even to
be a man, for what is man? Well, with all his sin, yet as You did make
him, when he had no sin, he was but a little lower than the angels and
You did make him to have dominion over all the works of Your hands. You
have made him immortal! You have made him a king! You have crowned him
with glory and honor and if he does but know his destiny, and works it
out aright, You have made him to be glorified with Yourself–You have
made him to stand even higher than the angels, now that You have
redeemed him, for he has tasted of a love which unfallen angels could
not know!

If you choose to make your being to be your eternal curse, why, you
must do it, I suppose–but not without our tears. But if you are
rational beings, and use your reason reasonably, you will thank God
that you live and pray that your life may always be a blessing to you.

But we also thank God that we have lived on in spite of many perils.
There are some here who ought very much to thank God that they live on
after the perils through which they have passed. It was something to
find ourselves alive after the terrible thunderstorm of the week before
last. It is something to be alive after an earthquake, or a tremendous
storm at sea, or to be alive in the midst of a pestilence, or alive
after a battle, to be alive after some fearful accident–to be alive, I
say, when there are so many gates to the grave–

"The rising morning can't assure

That we shall end the day,

For death stands ready at the door

To take our lives away."

And yet, despite all these things, we are still here! Some of you, not
long ago, were very ill. It was thought that you would die–you thought
so yourself, you were brought very low–and yet here you are! While
others have died, you are still spared. You went hard by the gates of
death and seemed to look into eternity for a while, but you were
allowed to pass on and you are yet among the living, to praise God, as
I hope you are doing this very day!

Yes, it is God's Grace that has granted us life. I find that, in the
Hebrew, it reads, "lives," as if we had several lives, as though, if we
had not had many lives, we should not have had any life at this moment.
But life upon life has come to us, like wave upon wave at sea and,
whereas one might have washed us on the shore of death, another has
carried us back to the sea of life, again, and still we live!

I am addressing some from whom our text asks for gratitude because they
are alive notwithstanding constitutional weakness. Perhaps from a child
you were always feeble. Oftentimes you have asked yourself, "How is it
that I have lived? Strong and hearty men and women have died before me
and I, who have always been ailing, find that the creaking door hangs
long on its hinges." Well, do not creak more than you can help, but
bless God that you are not taken off the hinges! It is really very
marvelous how some live, even, to old age when every day they seem to
be on the very verge of departure. We account for their continued life
by this fact, that they can say with Job, "You have granted me life."
Let us praise God, then, even if we can only do it with a feeble
tongue, for it is something, to still live.

And I am speaking to a great many here to whom this text should commend
itself because they have lived so long. I suppose that, in no other
place in London, or perhaps in the world, is there so large a number of
old men and women gathered together as in this Tabernacle. One is often
struck with the snow that lies about this place on the heads of so
many. Do not blame us for getting old! We were all young, together, and
I remember that many here were introduced into the Church as young men
and young women. Nearly 40 years ago they said of me, "He takes into
the Church a parcel of boys and girls." Well, they have been cured of
that fault, if it was a fault, long ago! And now, perhaps, some will
complain that they are old! We do not complain–we are so much nearer
Heaven. But when I look upon some dear friends, here, who have passed
even their four-score years, who have quite run out their lease and now
are living upon sufferance, as I trust they may for years to come–and
when I remember what a poor tottering fabric this tent-body of ours is,
I am amazed that we still live on!–

"Our life contains a thousand springs,

And dies if one is gone.

Strange that a harp of thousand strings

Should keep in tune so long."

Yet it has kept in tune so long and we ought to bless God, tonight,
those of us who are somewhere between 50 and a hundred, and others who
are somewhere between 60 and 200 ought to bless God, tonight, that we
have been spared so long, and say, in the language of the text, "You
have granted me life and favor." You need not be frightened about that
200 that I mentioned–you will not, any of you, be likely to reach that
figure! If any of us live for a century, we shall have done exceedingly
well! We may thank God if we do not live as long as that, for, while it
is well to live here, it is better for us, after all, before our
infirmities multiply, to be up and away to our Father's house above!

Think of this a little longer, "You have granted me life." You have
thought of the perils through which you have passed and the weaknesses
that you have survived. Now think, beloved Friends, of the sin which
might have provoked God to make an end of such a guilty life. Am I not
speaking to some here who have lived without any thought of God, their
Maker? Up till this time, God has fed you and preserved you in being,
and yet you have not even given Him a thought! It is an amazing thing
that He should have spared your life in the midst of such wicked
ingratitude. Perhaps, my Friend–I hope it is not so–but perhaps you
have been worse than this, and that mouth of yours has uttered
blasphemies, and the members of your body have been given over to
uncleanness. If you will look back, tonight, it will be a wonder to
you, that you, perhaps professedly an atheist, possibly a drunk–you
may be setting an evil example to wife and children and doing evil on
all sides–but you have been spared!

One seems to say, "Cut down that upas tree, it drips with poison!" But
God puts away the axe and He still spares you. Did you not, this very
day, imprecate a curse upon yourself, and yet the curse has not come?
There was a tract that used to be given away and which did much good.
It was called, "The Swearer's Prayer." If every swearer would look upon
his dreadful imprecation as a prayer, for such it is, he might well
wonder that God has not, long ago, blasted him as he has said, like
some oak of the forest that we have seen struck by lightning, standing
there with its stag's-horn branches high in the air, a monument of what
Divine Judgment can do! God has granted you life, yet nothing in that
life has been pleasing to Him, or good for your fellow men. Thank Him
that He has not yet cut you down as a cumberer of the ground!

But even if I speak to the best man and woman here, to those who have
tried to be useful and are endeavoring to be holy, yet, dear Friends,
what poor failures we are, after all! There is not one of us who can
boast! We have to lay our hands upon our mouths and bow ourselves into
the very dust. Truly, Lord, You have let us live, although we have done
so little, and done that little so faultily. We can, tonight, praise
You, and each one say, "You have granted me life."

I might thus continue to show you that our preservation in life is a
theme for great gratitude–"You have granted me life." But if we can
say this in a higher sense, "You have granted me life," spiritual life,
how much greater should our gratitude be! I could not even feel the
guilt of sin, I was so dead, but You have granted me life to repent. I
could not look to Jesus as my Savior and find rest in Him, but You have
granted me life to believe in Him. Oh, what a mercy it is to have
spiritual life! I do not like to ask you whether you have it. I do not
think that that ever ought to be a matter of question with anybody. A
man is either alive or dead and he must know which he is–and however
faint and feeble he may be, the very feeling of faintness and
feebleness is a sign of life–for the dead man does not even feel that!

If, tonight, you have only life enough with which to groan, to weep and
to cry to God, thank God for it, and say, "You have granted me life."
But if you have that little life, do not be satisfied with it. Pray to
have life more abundantly, that you may come to joy and peace through
believing, that you may have the full assurance of faith, that you may
be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, that you may tread
down sin and may serve the Lord in your day and generation, and bring
hundreds and thousands to Christ! Pray that it may be so and then, as
each single increase of power comes to you, sing, in the words of the
Patriarch, "You have granted me life." Oh, for more life! Do you feel
dull and dead tonight? Cry to God to grant you life! Cry for Divine
Grace and then, when it comes, gratefully say, "You have granted me
life."

II. The second blessing of this heavenly charter is DIVINE FAVOR–"You
have granted me life and favor."

Have you ever thought of the many favors that God has bestowed upon
you, even upon some of you who, as yet, have never tasted of His Grace?
What a favor it is to many to be sound in body! Dear friends are here
tonight who have not seen the light of the sun for many a day. God is
gracious to them in their blindness, but do you not think that we ought
to praise Him for our eyesight? There are many beloved Christian
friends who used to sit on this lower platform and around here, for
although they were deaf, they could hear my voice in the preaching of
the Gospel. But with great sorrow

they have come to me, one by one, and said, "I cannot even hear with
the trumpet now, I am getting so deaf." Bless God for your ears, if you
still have the use of them–and take heed how you hear! Why, there is
not a single faculty that God has given but what we ought to be
thankful for it! When you see around you these who are crippled, those
who are deprived of one limb or one sense, should you not say, "You
have granted me life and favor"? They have favors, too, for which to
thank God, but you have this particular favor which is denied to them.
Do not fail to thank the Lord for it.

It is a great mercy to have been born of good and honest parents and
not to be the inheritors of disease, as some are who are born to a life
of sorrow by no fault of their own. Be grateful for your ancestry,
young man, if you have sprung of good sound stock, and say, "You have
granted me life and favor." Do not go and give that body to the devil,
I beseech you! Do not go and plunge yourself into vice and sin if God
has restrained your ancestors from evil. By His Grace, may you also be
kept back and enabled to say, "You have granted me life and favor, and
I cannot sin against Your favor"!

I cannot help reminding you, here, of the great favor of God in the
matter of soundness of mind. There is a dear friend who has gladly
heard the preaching of the Gospel, here, but now he has to be confined
in an asylum, for it would be dangerous to have him at liberty. There
is another and we often meet with such, who seemed as cheerful and
happy as any of us, but he has now sunk into deep despondency. I have
often prayed God to let me go anywhere sooner than into an asylum. It
seems so dreadful to lose one's reason. Be grateful that you have your
senses. Surely you must already be lunatics if you do not bless God
that you are not lunatics! There must be a madness in your heart if you
do not thank Him for sparing you from so terrible a trial. These favors
are looked upon as very common things–a sound mind and a sound
body–but if they were universal, they would still be mercies for which
we ought specially to bless the name of the Lord.

I speak to many here to whom God has also given a comfortable lot in
life. You work and you work pretty hard, but still, you are not starved
and you are not ground to death by forced labor. There are many in this
House of Prayer who ought to be very grateful for the easy
circumstances in which they are found. Why am I talking about these
things? Why, because I want, by stirring you up to gratitude, to bind
you with cords of thankfulness to God! Will you not thank Him who has
done so much as this for you? If you were suddenly brought into the
deepest poverty and the most painful sickness, and did not know where
to lay your heads, you would then reproach yourselves to think that
when your lives were cast in pleasant places, and you had a goodly
heritage, you were not more grateful and more obedient to the God of
Love.

Some here, too, some few, at any rate, have been favored with much
prosperity. O self-made men, do not begin to adore yourselves because
you made yourselves, for if you made yourselves, you are poor sticks, I
know! I would not trust myself to make myself, I would make an awful
mess of myself. No, thank God for your prosperity and devote your
wealth to His service, who granted it to you. Grow not purse-proud! Be
not exalted above measure among your fellow men! The more you have, the
more you owe to God–therefore be humble and be devoted to Him who has
treated you with so much favor.

And I may say, tonight, that in this congregation, God has given you
the favor of hearing the Gospel–no mean favor, let me remind you.
Multitudes, multitudes, multitudes are without it, perishing for lack
of knowledge! And there are some who once heard the Gospel who are now
far removed from the sound of it. Friends who once used to join in our
great assembly are now far away in those parts of South America where
as yet there is no Gospel teaching, or they are far away in the
backwoods of America or Canada, or away in the bush in Australia,
where, as yet, the Message of Mercy is not, at any rate, regularly
brought to them, and they very much miss the means of Grace. Be
thankful that you have the Gospel at almost every street corner and, if
you are willing to hear it, you may hear it.

Still, putting all these things together, they do not come up to this
last point, that many of us have received the favors of saving
Grace–"You have granted me life and favor." The highest favors of all,
God has given to some of us–the favor of being chosen to be His from
before the foundation of the world, the favor of being redeemed from
among men, the favor of being called out by His effectual Grace, the
favor of being renewed in the spirit of our minds, the favor of
justification whereby we are made accepted in the Beloved–the favor of
full, free, irreversible pardon, whereby our sin is blotted out
forever, the favor of a Throne of Grace, the favor of answered prayer,
the favor of Divine Providence which makes all things work together for
our good, the favor of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who is with
us, and shall abide in us forever!

I cannot run over the list of God's favors to His people, for it is too
long. Only praise your God, each one of you, as you say tonight, "You
have granted me life and favor." Happy people, thrice-happy people, of
whom this is true! If we did not praise the Lord, the stones in the
street might well cry out against us.

III. The last blessing of the charter, upon which I shall be a little
longer, is DIVINE VISITATION–"Your visitation has preserved my
spirit." Does God ever come to man? Does He not? Yes, but it is a great
wonder–"What is man, that You are mindful of him? And the son of man
that You visit him?"

May I remind some of you of how much you ought to praise God for His
visitation? He visited you, first, with an awakening and conviction of
sin. I remember when His Spirit came to me while I was yet a child, and
made me feel a heavy burden on account of my childish sins. How I wept
and cried, when alone, because I had been so guilty before God! And as
a youth, that feeling still pursued me wherever I went. God visited me
in the night, visited me often in the morning, when I woke up before
anybody else, to read Baxter's, "Call to the Unconverted," and
Alleine's, "Alarm," and suchlike books, over which I pored again and
again, feeling the evil of my sin and having the sword of the Spirit
piercing yet more deeply into my conscience at every page I read! I
thank God for those early visitations! If any of you are having them
now, quench not the Spirit of God! Be glad to know your real state as
sinners while you are yet young. The visitations of God, in the form of
conviction, if at first they bring us under bondage, are, nevertheless
of the utmost value, for by these He preserves our spirit.

After that first experience, there came visitations of enlightenment
and conversion. Can you remember when Jesus first visited you and
brought you up out of the horrible pit, and out of the miry clay? Does
not your heart leap within you, even now, as you are ready to sing–

"Happy day! Happy day! When Jesus washed my sins away"? Yes, God's
visitations, by revealing Christ to your broken heart, preserved your
spirit!

Perhaps since then you have had visitations of another kind. You have
had chastisement, or you have had affliction in the house. God's
visitations are sometimes very unwelcome. We dread that He should come
to afflict or chastise us and yet, in looking back upon all such
experiences, I think that you can say, "Your visitation has preserved
my spirit." I saw a young Sister, just before this service, and I said
to her, "When did you find the Lord?" She replied, "It was when I was
very ill." Yes, it is often so–God makes us ill in body that we may
have time to think of Him, and turn to Him. "Your visitation has
preserved my spirit." What would become of some people if they were
always in good health, or if they were always prospering? Tribulation
is the black dog that goes after the stray sheep and barks them back to
the Good Shepherd! I thank God that there are such things as the
visitations of correction and of holy discipline to preserve our spirit
and bring us to Christ.

But then, dear Friends, we have had other visitations, visitations of
revival and restoration. Do you not sometimes get very dull and dead?
Then you are glad to go and hear a sermon, or read some godly,
soul-stirring book, or meet with some Christian friend, and you say
afterwards, "Well, I do not know how it is, but I seem quite different
from what I was. I have made a new departure, I have started off
again." I think that some of our friends have need to do that,
tonight–it will not hurt any of us if we all seem to begin again,
tonight, and take Jesus Christ into our heart once more, and let Him
come as He came at the first, and be like a new Christ to us! Let us
joy and rejoice in Him with our first love and our early delights.
Lord, give us that visitation, tonight, and revive our spirits! Oh,
what visitations of joy He sometimes gives us when He comes very near
to us! We do not hardly know how to bear it! We cry when the vessel
gets quite full, "Hold, Lord, I cannot bear more of Your joy." "Ah!"
you say, "we do not know much about that experience." Do you not? Then
pray the Lord to visit you often, that you may know more about it!

The best of all is when the Lord visits us and never goes away, but
stays with us always, so that we walk in the light of His Countenance,
and go from strength to strength, always singing, "Your visitation
never ended, daily continued, preserves my spirit." You have all heard
the phrase, generally used by juries at a coroner's inquest when a man
has died suddenly, "Died by the visitation of God." No doubt some do
thus die, but I want you to live by the visitation of God! That is a
very different thing and that is the only way in which we truly can
live–by God's visiting us from day to day– preserving our spirit from
the dangers that surround us. Live, then, by the visitation of God!

You are sick, my Friend. Your heart is sick. Sin, like a grievous
disease, is destroying you. The cancer of an evil habit is eating into
your very vitals. What is to be done with you? Nothing but that Jesus
Christ the Lord should come and give you a gracious visitation, come
and look you in the face and feel your pulse, and lay His hand on your
heart, and change it, and make you a new creature! And He will do all
that if you send for Him. Doctors have a night bell, you know, and a
night-tube, by which they may be called in cases of urgency. Now ring
God's night bell at once, and speak up that tube of prayer, "Lord, I am
sick unto death! Come and heal me. Come and heal me!" Will not somebody
in these pews, now, without the use of a word, yet say in the silence
of his heart, "Lord, I am sorely vexed; I am sick unto death with sin;
come and heal me"? And Jesus Christ will say, "I will come and heal
you." Then will you say, "Your visitation has preserved my spirit."

You know how a farm will sometimes get smothered with weeds and things
seem to go all wrong. What is the matter? On enquiry, you find that the
farmer has been out on the Continent, he has been away from his farm.
Well, then, of course the farm goes wrong! But have him back, again,
and the farmer's eye does more than his hand–his foot manures the
ground wherever he stands–and things soon get on better. Now, if the
farm of your nature has fallen into a bad state, you need the
Husbandman back. You need the Lord Jesus to come and survey the estate
and give directions as to what is to be done to it. He will soon set
the whole place right! Yes, if your farm has become like a desert, bare
as the palm of your hand, He can come and turn it to fertility–He can
make the wilderness like Eden, and the desert like the Garden of the
Lord. A visitation from the Lord Jesus Christ is what we all need when
we are barren and dead.

May we expect it? Yes, He came on a visit here, once. We did not see
Him when He came, but there were some who saw Him. You remember how
George Herbert quaintly sings of His laying aside His azure mantle and
making the sky with it? And taking off His bright rings, and hanging
them up as stars?–

"He did descend, undressing all the way And when they asked what He
would wear, He smiled, and said as He did come, He had new clothes
a-making here below." And poor clothes they were, when He was born of
the Virgin and lived in our inferior clay! He paid us a visit, but men
did not let Him lodge comfortably. There was no room for Him in the
inn. It was a sorry entertainment that they gave Him, for they pierced
His side before He went away, and He carried with Him the marks in His
hands and feet that He had received in the house of His friends. Well,
but still, having once come, and died on this earth, He knows the way–
and as He cannot die again, He will come again–and now, tonight, in
spirit, by His Spirit, He will come to you, if you only cry to Him,
"Come." If you cry to Him, "Come," tonight, that will be only the echo
of what He says, "Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy
laden." He cries, "Come," catch up that word, and say, "Come." Echo
His, "Come," by your own, "Come"–and you two will meet before the
service is over, though we have reached the last few minutes of it. May
your, "Come," and Christ's, "Come," blend in one! Come, Lord Jesus,
even so, come quickly, and set Your poor servants free from the taint
of sin, and from the dread of the wrath of God!

Yes, you need a visitation from Him who has already come and, beside
that, He has sent His Holy Spirit to abide until He, Himself, descends
from Heaven with a shout. The Holy Spirit is here in this assembly
right now–plead and cry to Him for His visitation!

And if my Lord will come anywhere, tonight, it is to you who think
yourselves unfit for Him to come to you! To you who would give your
eyes to have Him, but scarcely dare to hope that He will ever come to
you! The Lord says, "To this man will I look, even to him that is poor
and of a contrite spirit, and trembles at My Word." Do you not belong
to that kind of people, trembling at God's Word, wishing only that you
dared to hope in His mercy? Come, now, and cast yourselves on Jesus!
Come, now, and trust yourselves with the great Savior who has ascended
on high to give repentance and remission of sins, and who is ready to
give both the repentance and the remission to every soul that is
willing to have them! If you would have them, they are yours! Believe
for eternal life. Believe now!

The Lord grant you such a visitation that you may be constrained to
believe, for Jesus' sake! Amen and Amen.

EXPOSITIONS BY C. H. SPURGEON. PSALMS 6, 8.

Psalm 6: Here the Psalmist asks for a visit from God, for he is sick at
heart, heavy and depressed. Be very thankful if that is not your case,
but if it is, be very grateful that here is a prayer ready-made for
you. Here you are taught how to cry to God and what to expect from Him.
If you are very sick and sad, you are not worse off than David was.
Send for David's Physician–you cannot have a better doctor than the
royal Physician! He who waited on King David is prepared to wait on
you.

1. O LORD, rebuke me not in Your anger. "Rebuke me. It will do me good.
I need it, Lord, but not in anger! Be gentle and tender with
me–'Rebuke me not in Your anger.'"

1. Neither chasten me in Your hot displeasure. "Chasten me. It may be
that the rod will be very curative to me, but let not the chastening be
given in Your hot displeasure. Be not very angry with Your poor sinful
servant. If You do not turn away Your rod, yet turn away Your wrath. It
is a sweet prayer. Some people cry to God about their sickness. It is
much better to cry to God about the cause of it–that is to say if it
is a chastisement for sin, get rid of the sin–and the rod will then be
removed.

2. Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my
bones are vexed. "Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak." This was
a sweet reason for David to urge–"For I am weak." He could not say,
"For I am worthy." He would not have dared to say that. He could not
say that when he said, "Have mercy," for mercy is for the unworthy.
Justice is for the good! MERCY is for those who are guilty! "Have mercy
upon me, O Lord, for I am weak: O Lord, heal me; for my bones are
vexed." Plead the greatness of your disease as a reason for the remedy.
Do not come with your self-righteousness–that will hinder you. Come
with your sorrow and your sin, your weakness and your pain, and plead
these before God.

3. My soul is also sorely vexed. That is worse than the bones being
vexed. "The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded
spirit who can bear?"

3. But You, O LORD, how long? There is the pith of the prayer. David is
troubled because God is away from him. He has lost communion with his
Lord. He has gotten out of fellowship with his God and here comes the
most necessary cry of

all–

4. Return, O LORD, deliver my soul: oh save me for Your mercies' sake.
Will not that prayer suit you who are here, tonight, you who are full
of sin and are heart-broken about it, and dread the wrath to come? I
put this prayer into your mouths and pray the Holy Spirit to put it
into your hearts–"Oh save me for Your mercies' sake."

5. For in death there is no remembrance of You: in the grave who shall
give You thanks? As much as to say, "If You let me die, You will lose
one singer out of Your earthly choir. But if You will let me live, I
will remember You–I will praise You; I will give You thanks." Do you
feel like saying, tonight, "Lord, if You shall destroy me, You will
gain nothing by it. But if You will save me, there will be one who will
give You thanks forever"? I have told you, sometimes, of that old woman
who said, "If the Lord saves me, He shall never hear the last of it."
And you and I can also say that if He saves us, He shall never hear the
last of it–we will praise Him throughout eternity for His great
salvation!

6. I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I
water my couch with my tears. David was in a very sorry case when he
wrote these words. So great was his pain, so acute his sorrow that all
the sluices of his eyes were pulled up and he seemed to float his bed
in tears and to be like George Herbert when he wrote–

"O who will give me tears?

Come, all you springs,

Dwell in my head and eyes!

Come, clouds and rain–

My grief has need of all the watery things,

That Nature has produced!

Let every vein suck up a river to supply my eyes,

My weary, weeping eyes, too dry for me,

Unless they get new conduits, new supplies,

To bear them out and with my state agree."

7. My eyes are consumed because of grief. He had almost wept his eyes
out–they grew red with his weeping, so that he could not see.

7. It waxes old because of all my enemies. His eyesight grew dim, like
that of an old man. A cataract of grief had put a cataract of blindness
into his eyes.

8. Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity. He needs his God to
come to him, so he bids God's enemies clear out. If we keep company
with the wicked, we cannot invite God to our house and expect Him to
come. "Depart from me," says David, "all you workers of iniquity." "You
who are singing what you call a jolly song, be off with you! You who
are merry with your jokes against religion, be gone far from me."

8. For the LORD has heard the voice of my weeping. "And if He has heard
my tears, I do not need you to be here. I cannot associate with God's
enemies, now that He has heard the voice of my weeping." Is not that a
beautiful expression, "The voice of my weeping"? Why, there was no
sound, was there? Yet there are songs without words and there are
voices without sounds.

9. The LORD has heard my supplication; the LORD will receive my prayer.
"I thought at first that He would not take my petition; but I see He
stretches out His right hand. He receives my prayer–and if He receives
my prayer, I shall soon receive His answer."

10. Let all my enemies be ashamed and sorely vexed: let them return and
be suddenly ashamed. Now let us read the Eighth Psalm in which David
expresses great wonder that God, whom he had asked to visit him, should
deign to do so. I think I see him sitting with his window open. It is
night and he is feeling better–and he bids them throw open the window
and he sits and looks at the stars, glad of the cool, fresh air.

Psalm 8:1. O LORD our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the
earth! Who has set Your Glory above the heavens? They are very high,
but Your Glory is higher than the heavens.

2-4. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings have You ordained strength
because of Your enemies, that You might still the enemy and the
avenger. When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the
moon and the stars, which You have ordained; what is man, that You are
mindful of Him? And the son of man, that You visit him? He, whose voice
rolls the stars along, who makes those bright worlds to fly like sparks
from the anvil of His Omnipotence, how can He stoop so low as to regard
His fallen creature, man, who is so small, so insignificant?

5, 6. For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and have
crowned him with glory and honor. You made him to have dominion over
the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet. Man is
God's viceroy. He reigns over God's works in God's name. Let him not
set up to be a king and try to usurp the honor of his great Lord, the
Imperator, the Universal Governor!

7, 8. All sheep and oxen, yes, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of
the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatever passes through the paths
of the seas. What a king, man is! Let him not be cruel to the beasts of
the field; let him not be a tyrant; God did not make him for that
purpose. Let his reign be generous and kind–and if the animals must
suffer, yet spare them as much suffering as possible. O man, be you a
generous viceroy, for you are under a most generous King who is,
Himself, the happy God and who delights in the happiness of all His
creatures!

9. O LORD our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth! Thus
does the Psalmist finish as he began the Psalm, by praising the name of
the Lord.