The Glory of Our Strength

The Glory of Our Strength

(No. 3140)

A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 1909.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
FEBRUARY 13, 1873.

"For You are the glory of their strength." Psalm 89:17.

THE Psalmist Ethan is here speaking of the Covenant people–the people
of God, the people who know the joyful sound of the Covenant of Grace
and who, therefore, walk in the Light of God's Countenance. It is said
of these persons that God is the glory of their strength. All strength
of every sort comes from God. Since He is the Author of all being, it
is He who gives strength to every form of existence. Read the
remarkable chapters which close the Book of Job and see how God there
claims to have given strength to the eagle in her lofty flight and to
the horse when he paws in the valley– and leviathan and behemoth,
those mighty creatures of the sea and the land! God claims to have
given all the strength that there is in any of these members of the
inferior creation and we are certain that He also lays an equally just
claim to all the strength that there is in man. The power of the arms,
the swiftness of the feet, the keenness of intellect–all these come
from the Most High who has worked such wonders in the formation of the
human frame! Whatever of vigor and capacity there may be in it, all
must be traced to the almighty hand of God! Even the glory of man's
physical strength, whether he knows it or not, belongs to God. He makes
the young man vigorous and the full-grown man mature in strength, so He
ought to have the service of the strength which He has, Himself,
created!

Equally is this true of all mental power. The craftsmen learn their art
from God. Bezaleel and Aholiab were instructed of the Most High, "to
work in gold, and in silver, and in brass," as truly as Moses was
taught of God in the writing of the Law. The poet receives his power
for grand conceptions from God, who is beyond all human conception! And
he who is most learned in any particular science–the great discoverer,
the man who measures the stars or maps the seas–receives all his
mental strength from the Most High! It would be well if this were
always remembered, for it often happens that men who are great in
wisdom ascribe their greatness to themselves and then prostitute their
native talents and their acquired knowledge to their own ambitious
ends, or to some mean and groveling purpose. Oh, that all men would lay
out their talents for God, for He is the great Householder who has
given to one of His servants one talent, to another two and to another
five talents–and who will, at His coming–require from them an account
of what they have done with them! Oh, that all who are mentally strong
would ascribe the glory of their strength to God!

But there is a higher and nobler form of strength than either the
physical or the mental. We rise into another realm when we come to
speak of spiritual'things. There are some men whom God has raised up
from spiritual death. When they "were yet without strength, in due time
Christ died for the ungodly," and so He saved them from their death in
sin and they have been made spiritually strong by God through the
effectual working of His Son. By Divine Grace they are the sons of the
Almighty God and they have become mighty through Him, so the glory of
their strength is all to be ascribed to God. The Psalmist's
declaration, "You are the glory of their strength," is true in
reference to the whole of the spiritual seed–the Covenant people who
are made strong in spiritual things by the Grace of God.

I. Now, in trying to lead your thoughts into the meaning of this text,
I want you first of all, by way of contrast, to spend a few minutes in
considering the opposite of our text. God is the glory of our strength,
but what I want you now to think of is THE SHAME OF OUR WEAKNESS.

This is a very humiliating subject, but it is one that should never be
far from our thoughts, for we shall never realize to the fullest, the
glory of the strength which comes from God until we are deeply
conscious of the shame of the weakness which is in our nature as the
result of the Fall and of our own sin. What poor weak creatures we are!
It is no shame to us

that we have not the strength of the elephant or the lion. It is no
shame to us that we have not the wings of eagles or of angels. It is no
shame to us that we are often the sport of the elements, so that we
shiver in the cold or are blistered in the sun. It is no shame to us
that when the storm sweeps over the sea, it drives our navies before it
like so many cockle-shells. It is no shame to us that there are many
things in this world which are far more powerful than such a puny
creature as man is! Such weakness as that which God intended us to have
is no cause for shame–no, we turn to God in the full consciousness of
it and remind Him that we are but animated dust and that He made us
weak as we are–and intended us to be weak as we are! That is not where
the shame lies. The shame lies in the moral weakness which is natural
to us in our fallen state!

I mean that, left to ourselves, we are weak enough to allow our baser
spirits to be our masters and our meanest capacities to have the sway
over our entire nature. God has put the earth under our feet, but we
often put ourselves under the earth by permitting that which is earthy
to dominate us. We have a nature that, in its origin, was akin to the
Divine, yet how often we allow the passions of our fallen nature to
control our whole being! We let that part of our nature which is worst
be supreme over that which is best, yet it should never be so. Look at
the weakness of the strongest man ever born of a woman! See him lying
helpless at Delilah's feet and there committing suicide for I can call
it by no other name–by revealing the secret of his strength and so
delivering himself into the hands of the Philistines! Look at the
weakness of the wisest man who ever lived and see how Solomon's heart
was turned aside from God! Look at the weakness of one of the best of
men who ever lived, the man who was as great as a saint as he was as a
poet–David, the sweet singer of Israel–who was weak as water when
left to himself! I need not mention other cases. God grant that we may
not, ourselves, become instances of such weakness! But we have been, I
do not doubt, in some way or other, foolish enough to let our baser
passions consent to sin while our nobler spiritual nature has hated the
evil thing and fought against it.

Our weakness may also be seen in another way–we are very apt to be
carried away by circumstances. We think we are standing very firmly,
but a very slight change in our position or condition will affect us
very seriously. It is really extraordinary how easily a holy man, who
has been truly communing with God, will be put out of temper by a
circumstance so infinitesimal in importance that he would be ashamed to
have it known that he had been influenced by it! I think some of you
must have known what it has been to have close fellowship with God and
yet, afterwards, the merest trifle in the household has sufficed to rob
you of all the good you had gained. Possibly if God should give you, at
this service, a very special manifestation of His Presence and you were
to meet with a great trial at home, you would be enabled to bear it
with equanimity. Yet some little insignificant thing–I shall not
conjecture what may cause you to lose your temper or put you off your
guard in some other respect, or cause you to become concerned about
other things than the highest and best things and effectually bring you
down from your privileged position as follower of the Lord Jesus Christ
to the common level–I was about to say of an ordinary worldling! Oh,
how weak we are! How weak we are in such a case as that!

It is also amazing to think how good men have been led into sin and
overcome by the very smallest adversary. Look at Peter, for
instance–bold, lion-hearted Peter. Who was it that led him to deny his
Master? If some huge Roman legionary had come up to him with his drawn
sword and said to him, "You Galilean, if you dare to say, 'I know
Jesus,' this sword shall smite off your head," I should not wonder but
that Peter would have been equal to that emergency and certainly he
would have wished to have in his hand the sword with which he cut off
the ear of Malchus so that he might at least defend himself. If the
high priest had pointed to Peter and said, "I believe that yonder
stands one of the men who were with Jesus of Galilee," it may be that
he would have been bold enough to confess his Lord. But it was only a
damsel, one of the high priest's maids who saw him as he was warming
himself at the fire, and who said to him, "You, also, were with Jesus
of Galilee"–and he denied it–and so the strong man was overcome! It
is thus that little foes have frequently mastered us where great foes
could not do so. I think it was Admiral Drake who, in a storm at the
Nore, said to his sailors, "Surely we have not braved many tempests out
in the open sea to come here to be drowned in a ditch." Yet it has
often been so. Men who have done business in great waters, (who have
encountered huge Atlantic waves of temptation), have nevertheless been
allured into sin by a temptation that was utterly contemptible! And
perhaps it was just because it seemed to them so contemptible that they
became carnally secure and so it proved to be doubly dangerous to them.
But

oh, what weak creatures we must be when trifling circumstances can turn
us aside and when little things suffice to conquer us!

One thing in which we all betray our littleness is the readiness with
which we fall into the gross sin of idolatry. We are, none of us,
likely to bow down before blocks of wood and stone as the heathen do.
Nor are we likely to worship the god made of bread which is the god of
so many in this country–yet we are all too prone to make unto
ourselves gods that are really idols! At one time it is favorite child
who is thus worshipped. "There never was a fairer child than mine. She
is more like an angel than a human being," says the fond and foolish
mother whose heart is wrapped up in her little one! Then comes God's
great hammer that breaks all idols–and the dead child is carried to
the silent tomb. After such a painful experience as that, will the
mother ever make an idol of another child? Yes, there are some who have
done that, to their own confusion, time after time! If it has not been
a little child who has been thus idolized, it may have been the partner
of one's own life. Perhaps it has been some cherished idea which we
have pursued with such avidity that it has became a god to us. It is
very, very easy to put your trust in an arm of flesh–either your own
or somebody else's. But as soon as you do that, you bring yourself
under that ancient curse, "Cursed is the man that trusts in man and
makes flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from the Lord"–for all
trust in the creature is a subtle form of idolatry! After we have
trusted in the creature once, twice, 20 times and been deceived, will
we do it again? Yes, for such is the shame of our weakness that we
still turn away from the eternal arm which can never fail us and cling
to that poor puny arm of man that is often as false as it is weak! We
still we make gods of things that are not gods, for, like the children
of Israel, we are weak as water in this point also!

There is another thing that shows the shame of our weakness, namely,
our unbelief. Have you never caught yourself saying, "After this, I
shall never have a doubt again"? I have frequently found some such
expression as that come to my lips, for I have had such extraordinary
deliverances and such proofs of God's gracious loving kindness that
when I have received them, I have said, "Oh, what a blessed God! Oh
what a faithful God! Oh, what a prayer-answering God!" And then the
thought has come, "The next time I am in trouble, I shall not be so
timorous and so unbelieving!" Yet I fear that many of you will have to
join me in confessing with deep shame and confusion of face that it has
only needed a new trial to come to us to cause us to find out that what
we thought was strength was utter weakness! Have not you also found it
so? Why, we are weaker even than our own children, for our children can
and do trust their father! But sometimes we, the loved ones of Heaven,
cannot and do not trust our Father who has never deceived us! We may
well lament the shame of our weakness.

If I were to keep on speaking of this part of my theme, I might show
you that we are weak everywhere and weak in every way–weak to all good
and weak in the presence of all evil if God once withdraws Himself from
us. You who are most mighty in prayer, are you not sometimes weak when
you are upon your knees? You who often bear testimony to Christ with
much courage, are you not sometimes weak in holy boldness? You who can
generally rejoice in the Lord, are you not sometimes weak and feeble
through despondency? Apart from God, our whole head is sick, our whole
heart is faint and we are a mass of misery and a heap of weakness!

II. Now, having spoken thus by way of converse, I hope it is a fitting
preparation for our dwelling a little while upon the second point which
is, according to the text, THE GLORY OF OUR STRENGTH. True Believers,
though they are a very feeble folk in themselves, are very strong when
God is with them! They are so strong that their strength has a great
glory in it of which we will now speak. The strength of the true
Christian is so great that nothing can overcome him and he is more than
a conqueror in every engagement into which he enters!

What strength God gives to us, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, at
the very first, when we rise out of the grave of our spiritual death.
There we lie, bound hand and foot in that dark sepulcher–and a great
stone is rolled over the mouth of it. The moment the Lord says to us,
"Come forth," we open our eyes and begin to discover the gloomy grave
in which we lie. Then and there God gives us the power to unbind
ourselves, to remove the stone and to come forth into liberty! I mean
that men, quickened by Divine Grace, deliver themselves from evil
habits, from customs which had bound them as with bands of iron, from
inveterate sins which had held them captive as in a net! They become
free from all these things in the strength of the Holy Spirit when He
has regenerated them and brought them up from their spiritual
captivity. The achievements of a new-born soul, in its first conflicts
with its old sins, are perfectly marvelous! There are many wonders in
the Christian life, but I believe that the first stroke he gives when
he is but newly born and, therefore weak, has a marvelous degree of
power in it. Many men have been swearers. Many have been drunkards.
Many have been guilty of all manner of evil, but those old sins have
been laid dead at their feet by one blow struck in the power of the
ever-blessed Spirit. Truly, the glory of the strength of the new-born
child of God must lie in his God!

The man being Divinely quickened, we now find him contending for the
right. And wherever he contends, he over-comes!The world frowns on him
and he laughs at the frown. Then it fawns on him and he despises its
flattery. Sham faith soon yields to the enemy, but real faith wins the
victory over the world! If the whole world should attack a true
Believer, the Believer would overcome the world and break through all
its toils. Faith also overcomes the flesh and that is no small victory.
He who has true God-given faith in Christ contends with inbred
corruptions, strong passions and the deceitful-ness that is engrained
within the human heart. Where the life of God is in the heart, there is
strength given to overcome the flesh. Though the man may have been
sensual and devilish before conversion, Divine Grace is more than a
match for the flesh and Grace gains the victory! It is a great thing to
be able to overcome the world, the great world without and the little
world within–but Satan comes into the field and sets himself among
those who are arrayed against the Believer–and, blessed be God, the
devil fares badly in the fight, for many a time the dread Apollyon who
has stretched himself across the way and said that he would slay the
saint, has himself been pierced by the Sword of the Spirit and has fled
away wounded! What strength there must be in the Believer when he is
able to overcome that accursed trinity of antagonists– the world, the
flesh and the devil!

When God is in him, the Christian finds himself able to do anything.
"By You," says David, "I have run through a troop, and by my God have I
leaped over a wall." And God said, "Fear not, you worm Jacob, and you
men of Israel, I will help you, says the Lord" and your Redeemer, the
Holy One of Israel. "Behold, I will make you a new sharp threshing
instrument having teeth; you shall thresh the mountains and beat them
small." Weak as we are, with God's help, nothing is impossible for us!
What feats of valor some Believers have performed! Read the histories
of the saints of the olden ages and think of the Apostles and their
immediate followers. What strength was theirs and it was only faith
that made them strong! You have read Foxe's Book of Martyrs, perhaps,
till you have felt your blood boil with indignation and you have shut
the book up and said, "I can read no more of the dreadful story lest it
should disturb my dreams." But if you cannot even bear to think of the
tortures which the saints underwent, what must it have been for them to
bear them so heroically as they did? Women and even children defied
their tormentors and there were saints who, in the midst of the fire,
bravely quoted verses of Scripture against their persecutors and with
holy joy sang Psalms in the midst of the flames! How the saints baffled
Nero, Domitian and other cruel tyrants! The Inquisition, in its dreary
vaults, almost rivaled Hell in its pains and torments, but it was not
able to quench the noble spirit of God's faithful servants! The
persecutors may do what they will, but only give us a band of men and
women who have God's Spirit in them–and even though their foes may
tear them limb from limb–they shall not conquer them! It is impossible
that God's true saints should be overcome, for they have a glory of
strength that nothing can destroy!

Neither persecution, nor tribulation, nor nakedness, nor distress, nor
famine, nor peril, nor sword, no, nor even death, itself, has been able
to make the saints deny their Master! And we see the same strength
upholding them still! I have, in my mind's eye now, one dear Sister, a
member of this Church, in whom I have seen, within the last few days,
the matchless way in which the saints can conquer death. When they have
been almost worn out by disease and incessant pain. When sleep has been
banished from their eyes. When their whole body has been only a road
for the feet of pain to traverse–even then they have never been
impatient and they have rejoiced in the prospect of departure–not
merely because they wished to be free from pain, but because the
Presence of Christ had already made them so happy that they longed to
get to the fountainhead of those sweet streams which were even then
making them glad! Death has never yet conquered a saint! The children
of God have all been conquerors. Every sepulcher of a saint is but
another monument of the victory of faith! "These all died in faith,"
might be inscribed over the vast mausoleum of Believers–and then the
palm branch might be put at the bottom of the inscription, for, dying
in faith, they, every one of them, achieved the victory!

Let me add that God's servants have a glory of strength which I must
not even mention without much humbleness of heart. God's people are,
through His Grace, so strong that they not only overcome the world, the
flesh and the devil, but they overcome God Himself. Oh, matchless
mystery, that the Omnipotent should yield to the Believer 's strength!
Do you ask, "How is this?" Let me remind you of the Brook Jabbok and
the memorable wrestling there when the Divine Wrest-

ler said to Jacob, "Let Me go, for the day breaks," but the brave man
of faith replied, "I will not let You go, except You bless me." And so
he won the blessing–and with it came that new name, so full of
meaning–"Your name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel, for as a
prince have you power with God and with men, and have prevailed." Truly
did Joseph Hart, write, concerning God-given faith–

"It treads on the world and on Hell!

It vanquishes death and despair!

And what is still stranger to tell

It overcomes Heaven by prayer!" Surely there is a great glory in the
strength of a Christian when even Heaven is moved by the pleading voice
of a true Believer!

III. Now let us notice, in the third place–and may the Spirit of God
give His own unction and power with the

thought!–that Believers, thus having God-given strength, know that ALL
THE GLORY OF THEIR STRENGTH

LIES IN GOD.

I hope you have understood this Truth of God even while I have been
speaking about it, for it is true that the Christian has no other
strength than that which has come from God. It is so in every
individual Christian. The glory of any strength that he has must be
given to God because God has given that strength to him. Have you all
learned this lesson yet or are any of you proud of anything that you
are, or of anything that you have done? Have you not yet learned the
Truth of the text, "You are the glory of their strength"? Have you been
foolish enough to say, "I preach well," or, "I work well," or, "I
suffer well," or, "I am growing in Grace, so there is some credit due
to me?" Dear Brother, if you talk like that, may the Lord deliver you
from all such delusions! He is the glory of our strength–let us keep
to that and never get away from it, for the Lord our God is a jealous
God and He is especially jealous of His own glory! And if He sees that
we give that glory to ourselves, or to any other but Himself, He will
take away from us the strength that He gave and make us cry out once
again because of our weakness. So do not destroy your own strength by
taking the glory of it to yourself. Oh, how many a man has flung
himself from the battlements of his pulpit by beginning to feel that he
did it and that he had some strength of his own! How many a professor
has marred a life of consistency in one dark hour–and the reason has
been that self-sufficiency and carnal security were hidden away in his
bosom–and at last betrayed him. When you are strong, then are you
weak. But when you are conscious of weakness, then are you truly
strong! While you lay the crown at the feet of Him who gave you the
strength to win it, you will always be made strong. But as soon as you
begin putting the crown on your own head, your strength shall be taken
from you and if, like Samson, you go out to shake yourself as at other
times, you will find that the Lord has departed from you to chasten you
for your pride!

Further, what is true of individual Christians is also true of a Church
And I want to impress this Truth upon the members of this Church and
upon the members of all other Churches. When God makes a Church strong,
it is a very blessed and glorious thing–but the glory and strength of
every Church must always lie in God. It never lies in the fact that
there are many wealthy persons belonging to it. If God ever sees His
people worshipping the golden calf, He will send a plague upon them to
punish them for their idolatry! The glory of a Church must never lie in
the fact that there are certain persons of intelligence connected with
it. I believe that is the worm at the root of many Churches and that it
will lead to their decay. Everything is done with the view of pleasing
two or three people who are supposed to be very intellectual–yet those
very people, if they are the Lord's people–do not need "intellectual
preaching" at all! They have enough work for their intellect on the
other six days of the week and they need the simple Gospel–plain
spiritual food for their souls to feed upon on the Sabbath! There are a
great many ministers who cause their hearers to break the fourth
commandment for the labor involved in hearing them preach is indeed
terrible–it must rack the soul instead of resting it! I should like to
see a Lord's-Day Rest Society established to keep the people's mind at
rest instead of their being tortured with all manner of quibbles and
questions! They need to hear of Jesus Christ, for He is the true Rest
for the soul and it is the very essence of the Divine Commandment to
leave your own work and to rest in Christ! That is the way to keep the
Sabbath holy and he who has not done that cannot know the true Sabbath
rest which is the portion only of those who are resting in the Lord
Jesus Christ!

So it will not do to make the glory of our strength to lie in the
wealthy people or the intelligent people. And it will not do to make
the glory of our strength to lie in fine elocution. "The wisdom of
words" appears to have strength in it,

but when it makes the Cross of Christ of no effect, it is sheer
weakness! It was one of the worst days that ever dawned upon the Church
of Christ when it began to cultivate the art of oratory and turned
aside to "enticing words of man's wisdom." But when men speak out of an
overflowing soul of what God has done for them, that is the power which
the Spirit of God gives to them and the power which He will bless to
their hearers! They do not then try to use out-of-the-way words and
nicely rounded sentences, nor to pile up perorations–for that is
magnifying the preacher and dishonoring the Word that has come out of
the mouth of God!

The glory of our strength must never lie in any of these things–it
must lie in God alone. If it does so lie, then we shall glory in the
Gospel which is one of the great supports of our strength! We shall
glory in the Cross of Christ which is the main strength of the Gospel.
And we shall glory in the Holy Spirit, who alone can raise the
spiritually dead, who alone can give the eyes that look to Christ upon
the Cross and who alone can make the heart long after its Redeemer! O
Brothers and Sisters in Christ, we have need to pray for God the Holy
Spirit to work mightily among us! We have the Holy Spirit still with
us, so we have no need to pray that He would come down from Heaven. He
came down at Pentecost and He never went back to Heaven, so He is still
here. He is in all His people! He is in this assembly right now. He
dwells among us, though we are apt to forget that He does. We reckon
that the glory of our strength lies in our ministers, or in our
organizations, or in our creeds. We forget that the glory of our
strength is spiritualand lies in the Holy Spirit, Himself, who is in us
and who shall be forever in us if we are truly the Lord's! Cry mightily
in prayer, Beloved, that this true glory of our strength may
continually be revealed in our midst as a Church, for so often we
restrain Him, grieve Him and bind Him, as it were, with chains! He
cannot do many mighty works among us because of our unbelief. He
withholds His richest blessings because of our sinfulness. Let us turn
to Him again! O Lord, turn us and we shall be turned, and then we shall
see the glory of our strength among us, and we shall give all the glory
to Him who gives to us all our strength!

I offered a prayer, this evening, (and I prayed in faith), that the
Lord would, in His mercy, save some souls tonight. And I expect to hear
that He has done so. I do not expect that blessed fact to remain
concealed until we get to Heaven, but I expect to know tonightthat same
of my hearers have come and found rest in Jesus!

I think I hear someone say, "I would gladly be saved, but I am so
weak." But the almighty Savior came to save weak sinners! "Oh, but I am
so weak I do not feel any repentance." But Christ was exalted to give
repentance! O poor weak ones, it is to just such as you are that Jesus
says, "Look unto Me and be you saved, all the ends of the earth." It is
but a lookthat is needed–and even thatthe Holy Spirit gives you! He
gives it to you now–He enables you now to look to Jesus, the great
atoning Sacrifice! And as you look, you are saved in a moment, saved
through His Grace by that simple looking unto Jesus! Oh, to leap out of
death into life, out of thick darkness into unutterably glorious light
in one moment! I pray that the Holy Spirit may speak to many a soul
here through the words that I am now uttering. "Awake, you that sleep
and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light." The Lord
grant that it may be so–and to Him shall be the glory, for He is the
glory of our strength. Amen!

EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM89.1-38.

Verses 1, 2. I will sing of the mercies of the LORD forever: with my
mouth will I make known Your faithfulness to all generations. For I
have said, Mercy shall be built up forever: Your faithfulness shall You
establish in the very heavens.

[See Sermon #1565, Volume 26–MASCHIL OF ETHAN, A MAJESTIC SONG.] So
far,

the gracious man declares the resolution of his heart to praise his God
forever and gives the reason for that resolve. Now he quotes the Lord's
Covenant with David.

3, 4. I have made a Covenant with My chosen, I have sworn unto David,
My servant, Your seed will I establish forever, and build up your
throne to all generations. Selal. That Covenant, as you well know, was
not only made with David, but it had a higher spiritual bearing, for it
related to that great and glorious Son of David who still reigns and
shall reign forever–and in whom every Covenant blessing is secured.

5. And the heavens shall praise Your wonders, O LORD: Your faithfulness
also in the congregation of the saints. It is often very profitable
when we are enjoying fellowship with God, for us to speak to God and
then wait for God to speak to us. It is so here, you see. First the
Psalmist says that he will praise God forever. Then God tells him of
His Covenant

and explains to him the reason why mercy shall be built up forever. And
then the man of God begins to praise God again. That will give you a
hint for your own private devotion. Sometimes you feel that you cannot
praise God and cannot pray to Him. Well then, if you cannot speak to
God, sit still and let Him speak to you! Read a portion of Scripture
and then, perhaps, some suggestive verse or word in it will set you
praying. And then when you have prayed, stop a little while and read
again–and so a blessed conversation shall be carried on between you
and your God! Thus the Psalmist takes his turn again–"And the heavens
shall praise Your wonders, O Lord: Your faithfulness also in the
congregation of the saints."

6, 7. For who in the Heaven can be compared unto the LORD? Who among
the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the LORD? God is greatly to
be feared. That is, reverenced.

7-9. In the assembly ofthe saints, and to be hadin reverence ofall them
that are about Him. O LORD God ofHosts, who is a strong LORD like unto
You? Or to Your faithfulness round about You? You rule the raging ofthe
sea: when the waves thereof arise, You still the . He lets them arise
and He bids them sink down again. All the Providential dealings of God
seem to be illustrated in the ever-varying phenomena of the sea. The
Lord sometimes lets tempests arise in our circumstances, but soon with
a Word He stills them and there is a great calm.

10. You have broken Rahab in pieces as one that is slain.The great
crocodile of Egypt.

10-12. You have scattered Your enemies with Your strong arm. The
heavens are Yours, the earth also is Yours: as for the world and the
fullness thereof, You have founded them. The north and the south You
have created them: Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in Your name. Oh,
what a blessed spirit the spirit of true devotion is! There is such
life in it that it seems to quicken all inanimate creation and make the
rocks and mountains sing, the trees of the woods to clap their hands
and the waves of the sea to praise the great Creator! So the whole
world is like a great organ and man, guided by God's Spirit, puts his
fingers on the keys and wakes the whole world to the thunder of
adoration and praise! Oh to be taught of God to have a praiseful heart,
for then all around us will be more likely to also praise Jehovah!

13, 14. You have a mighty arm. [See Sermons #674, Volume 12–THE MIGHTY
ARM and #1314, Volume 22 which has the same titlt.] Strong is Your
hand, and high is Your right hand. Justice and judgment are the
habitation of Your Throne: mercy and Truth shall go before Your face.
There are wells of joy in this verse to those who know how to draw it
up. It is a great delight to every man who is oppressed to know that
justice and judgment stand, like armed sentinels, on either side of the
Throne of God and to every human soul, conscious of unworthiness, it is
an unspeakable delight that Mercy and Truth, like royal heralds, go
before God wherever He goes! It has been well said that a God of all
mercy would be an unjust God–but a God of all justice without mercy
would be terrible, indeed!

15-21. Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall
walk, O LORD, in the light of Your Countenance. In Your name shall they
rejoice all the day: and in Your righteousness shall they be exalted.
For You are the glory of their strength: and in Your favor our horn
shall be exalted for the LORD is our defense; and the Holy One of
Israel is our king. Then You spoke in vision to Your holy one, and
said, I have laid help upon one that is mighty; I have exalted one
chosen out of thepeople. Ihave found David My servant; with My holy
oilhave I anointed him: with whom My hand shall be established: My arm
also shall strengthen hi . David was a great blessing to the nation
over which God made him king. Among the choicest gifts that God ever
gives to men are men and, therefore, we read concerning Christ, "When
He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto
men"–and those gifts were men, for, "He gave some, Apostles and some,
Prophets; and some, Evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers." These
were the choice ascension gifts of Christ! Yet, while these verses
primarily refer to David, the king of Israel, we must believe that a
greater than David is here, even Christ, who deigns to call Himself
God's Servant, who has been anointed by the Spirit of God, with whom
God's hand is always established and who is ever strengthened by the
arm of Omnipotence.

22-25. The enemy shall not exact upon him; nor the son of wickedness
afflict him. And I will beat down his foes before his face and plague
them that hate him. But My faithfulness and My mercy shall be with him:
and in My name shall his horn be exalted. I will set his hand also in
the sea and his right hand in the rivers. Do not believe, dear Friends,
any of the prophecies that some men make concerning the destruction of
the Kingdom of Christ and the failure of His Church– but be certain
that the Lord will not suffer Christ to fail or be discouraged–and
rest assured that the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hands!
The history of the Church of Christ is a history of conflict, but it
shall be a history of victory before it is completed–"I will set his
hand also in the sea, and his right hand in the rivers."

26-34. He shall cry unto Me, You are my fatheer, my God, and thee rock
of my salvation. Also I will make him My first-born, higher than the
kings of the earth. My mercy will I keep for him forevermore, and My
Covenant shall stand fast with him. His seed also will I make to endure
forever, and his throne as the days of Heaven. If his children forsake
My law, and walk not in My judgments; if they break My statutes, and
keep not My commandments; then will I visit their transgression with
the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless My loving
kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer My faithfulness
to fail. My Covenant will I not break, or alter the thing that is gone
out of My lips. If, then, you are in the Covenant, you will have the
rod–you may rest sure of that! If you do not walk in God's ways, but
break His statutes, you will not be allowed to go unchastened. If a
father saw some boys in the street breaking windows or otherwise
misbehaving themselves–and he gave one of the boys a box on the ears,
you may be pretty certain that the boy is his own son. And when God
sees men doing wrong, He often permits the wicked to go unpunished in
this life–but as for His own people, it is written, "You only have I
known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for
all your iniquities." Our heavenly Father's hand still holds the rod
and uses it when necessary–but it is in love that He corrects us. Let
us, therefore, when He chastens us, plead the Covenant that is here
recorded and say to Him, "You have said, 'Nevertheless My loving
kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer My faithfulness
to fail. My Covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone
out of My lips.'"

35-37. Once have I sworn by My holiness that I will not lie unto David.
His seed shall endure forever, and his throne as the sun before Me. It
shall be established forever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in
Heaven. Selah.