Eternal Life!

Eternal Life!

(No. 2396)

INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, JANUARY 20, 1895,

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNAOLE, NEWINOTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
FEBRUARY 6, 1887.

"This is life eternal, that they might know You, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ, whom You have sent." John 17:3.

"We are in Him that is true, even in His Son, Jesus Christ. This is the
true God, and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from
idols." 1 John 5:20,21.

OUR subject this morning [Sermon #1946, Volume 33–Eternal Life within
Present Grasp] was concerning laying hold on eternal life, and I
thought that I would say a little more, tonight, about eternal life.
Many people, when they hear or read that expression, suppose that it
means Heaven. It does mean that, but it means much more. Eternal life
commences here–it begins in the Believer as soon as he is born again.
Then he receives into him that same life which he will have throughout
eternity! Eternal life is not a thing of changes. The river widens and
deepens, as I showed you this morning, but it is always the same river
of the Water of Life–it always flows from the same Source–it is
always constituted in the same manner. The life of the new-born
Christian who, only a few minutes ago began to pray, is precisely the
same life which is to be found in yonder bright spirits that have now
been thousands of years in perfection at the right hand of God praising
His name! Death does not transport Believers into a new life–it simply
rids us of certain impediments that hamper our true life in its upward
flow. The life of the Christian, here, is the triumphant life that is
to be enjoyed hereafter! It is one and the same life so far as its real
nature is concerned.

It was the great end of the life, death and work of Christ to give this
eternal life to all Believers. He came into the world on purpose, that
they should forever live through Him. He has not accomplished His
design in you, my Hearer, unless He has made you live unto God. There
is a Savior–that you know–but He is not your Savior unless He has
infused into you a life infinitely superior to that which was born in
you at the first. "You must be born again." And by that new birth you
must receive a higher and more Divine life than that which throbs in
your bosom by nature. Judge for yourself whether Christ has come into
the world to any purpose that affects you and especially judge whether
you have received eternal life at His hands. Remember how it is
written, "As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the
sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born,
not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but
of God." The ever-living God is not the Father of dead souls, but He is
the Father of those whom He has quickened–and the power to become sons
of God lies, in a great measure, in the life which is Divinely imparted
to all who receive Christ and believe on His name.

It is in the power of Christ to give this eternal life. In the verse
preceding our first text, the Lord Jesus, addressing His Father, says
of Himself, "You have given Him power over all flesh, that He should
give eternal life to as many as You have given Him." The Father has
life in Himself and He quickens all who live–and even so, the Son of
God, our Lord Jesus Christ, has life in Himself–and this life He
imparts to all who believe in Him. It is in His power to bestow that
life upon every soul that trusts Him and He delights in exercising His
Divine prerogative.

Our Lord Jesus bestows this eternal life only upon His elect. Speaking
to His Father, in the verse I quoted just now, He says of Himself, "You
have given Him power over all flesh that He should give eternal life to
as many as You have given Him." God has an elect people. So long as the
Bible endures, there is no way of getting that doctrine out of it
unless men willfully pervert its plainest teaching. From before the
foundation of the world the Lord chose a people unto

Himself, according to the Sovereign purpose of His own will, even as He
says, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have
compassion on whom I will have compassion."

These people whom God has chosen are made known by their being
quickened, in due time, into a higher and superior life than that of
the flesh. Till then they are like the rest of mankind–dead as the dry
bones of Ezekiel's Valley of Vision–but the Divine breath of the
Eternal Spirit blows upon them and they are made to live and stand upon
their feet, an exceedingly great army! By this test can all of you know
whether you are the subjects upon whom God's Grace has worked. Is there
a new life within your soul? Have you been raised from death unto life?
Have you been made to feel new emotions, new desires, new longings, new
pains and new joys? For, if you have, then are you the people of God!
But if not, I pray that in you, also, Divine Grace may yet be thus
magnified.

The question for us now to consider is in what does this eternal life
consist? I do not propose to answer the question as it might be
answered, in various ways, but only according to the first of our two
texts–"This is life eternal, that they might know You, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent."

I. First, then, ETERNAL LIFE CONSISTS IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE ONLY TRUE
GOD. Let us think for a little while upon the lack of this knowledge.
The loss of this knowledge followed upon the Fall. As long as man knew
his God, trusted his God and obeyed his God, he was happy enough. But
man must know the fallen spirit and, once making acquaintance with him,
man must know the knowledge of good and evil. And, contrary to the
Lord's command, he must take of the forbidden fruit and eat. So he lost
the knowledge of God and, with that loss, he lost everything! The
highest privilege of manhood is to be acquainted with God–and when our
first father turned his back upon God and began to unlearn whatever he
had known of his Creator and to forget all that had been revealed
concerning his Lord, then came the Fall–and it was a fall, indeed!

Out of this lack of knowledge of God grew all manner of idolatries. Man
must have a God–he cannot be happy without one. There are some who
struggle hard before they yield, but, as surely as a dog must have a
master, so surely man must have a God! There is a great superior Being,
our Creator, Preserver and Judge, whom we must have as our Redeemer, or
else we are utterly undone. Without God, our nature is disabled and
divided–its best part has run away–it becomes dead, in fact, when it
becomes separated from God. It was the lack of knowledge of the only
true God that led men to bow down before blocks of wood and stone, to
worship the sun, moon and stars–and to set up all manner of visible
objects and to say of them–"These are our gods." Oh, to what terrible
mischief, to what mental and spiritual death, the lack of the knowledge
of God has led the sons of men!

Nor is this all that the lack of the knowledge of the true God has
produced in us. It has spoiled the best aspirations of the noblest men
such as Plato and Socrates. Blindly feeling after God, yet without
truly knowing Him, what could they do? They could rise to no great
height–they could accomplish but little. Men such as they reared an
altar and inscribed thereon, "To the unknown god." But what kind of
prayer is that which is offered to a god whom we do not know? What
comfort can come out of an unknown god? What peace, what rest, what joy
can come from a being after whom we grope in the dark, but whom we do
not know? Not to know the only true God is death–death even to the
noblest spirits among us! But it is a much more terrible death to those
who, knowing nothing of God, seek that which will please self, indulge
their vile lusts and follow their unbridled passions! What is all that,
indeed, but the result of the fact that, not knowing God, they are
seeking to submit themselves to some other lord? Man must have a
master! He is like a horse that must have a rider! He is so constituted
that unless he yields himself to a power superior to himself, he
grovels and sinks down yet more and more until his condition is little
better than that of the beasts that perish! Indeed, in some respects,
he is worse off than they are.

I can scarcely picture what manhood would have been if we had never
fallen. The chief joy, I think, would have been that each one among us
would have had the only true God as ours. We should have been born into
the world, whatever our circumstances, under the patronage of God! We
would have gone forth to our labor, sweetly singing in the
companionship of God. We would have retired to our rest at
night–supposing that things had been as they are now–and we would
have fallen asleep as in the embraces of our God, or on our Father's
breast. Days would have had a brightness about them superior to any the
sun can yield, and nights would have had nothing for us to dread even
in their densest darkness, for the Lord would still have been there! As
a child is happy and knows no care nor need while a good father
provides for him everything he needs, such would man have been. Oh, men
are miserable who have not known their God! Unhappy men! Well may
Scripture speak of them as dead, for it is death to be without the
knowledge of God!

But, Brothers and Sisters, what is this knowledge of God which is
eternal life? Let us talk a little about the meaning of this knowledge.
It is not eternal life to know that there is a God! A great many people
know as much as that and still remain dead. Those who know not that
there is a God are dead in the dark, but those who know that there is a
God and yet do not trust Him, are dead in the light! That condition is,
perhaps, the worse of the two. At any rate, it involves a greater
responsibility. Yet, to know that there is a God is not the same thing
as knowing God. I may know that there is a Queen of England, but I may
not know her. I know that there are many persons in the world whom I do
not know and it is a sad thing for anyone to know that there is a God
and yet not truly to know God.

To explain what is meant by knowing God, I must say, first, that it is
to know Him as God, that is to say, to know Him as God to us. I have
already told you that everybody has something that is god to
him–something that is superior to himself and which rules
him–something to which he looks up to and which he worships. Now, the
great invisible Jehovah, the one God that made Heaven and earth, in
whose hands our breath is, who has revealed Himself in the Trinity of
His Divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit–the God of Abraham, of
Isaac, and of Jacob–the God of the whole earth, must be God to us!
That means that we reverence Him, that we bow before Him as
worshippers, that we submit ourselves to His Law, that we seek to do
His pleasure. No man really knows God who does not know Him as God, and
does not accept Him as His God–and to accept God as your God is
eternal life! This is how eternal life becomes yours! And if you have
come to that point, you have eternal life.

Still, that statement does not fully explain what it is to know God. It
is to be on terms of personal acquaintance with Him. The Lord is not to
be seen, neither can His footsteps be heard, but to know God is to be
conscious of His Presence by an inward sense which does both see and
hear. It is to feel that He is everywhere–on the land or on the sea
and, knowing that He is there, to rejoice in being with Him! In fact,
it is to find great delight in this God who is not far from any of us.
It is to be (let me put it very plainly) on speaking terms with Him! It
is to be so reconciled to Him that you have no dread of Him, no bondage
and fear when you think of Him.

You then regard God as your best Friend whom you love and, in whom you
delight, to whom you talk as naturally as you talk to friend or father,
into whose bosom you pour your griefs, into whose heart you tell your
joys. God is nearer than your most familiar friend, nearer to you than
eyes and ears, nearer to you than your own body, for He gets within
your soul, which your body can never do! If you really know,
experimentally, what I am talking about, you have eternal life. If this
is so, that you know the only true God, distinctly recognizing His
Presence, speaking with Him and rejoicing in Him and, if, above all,
you are striving to be like He–if His Spirit in you is photographing
the image of God upon your nature so that the old image, which He gave
to Adam, but which was effaced by sin, is being reproduced in you by
the Holy Spirit–then you know the only true God and this, dear
Friends, is eternal life!

Now, having shown you what the lack of this knowledge produces and the
meaning of this knowledge, let me briefly speak of the connection
between the knowledge of God and eternal life.

A man without God is a living man, of course, for he works, he eats, he
drinks. Yes, but he has missed the only true life. He has missed a
secret happiness which is the very essence of life and, without which
life is really death. You do not know it, dear Hearer, if you have
never believed in Christ! And I do not expect you to believe what I
say, but let me tell you that there is a something that makes life
worth living when you once come to know God. There is a secret bliss–I
cannot call it anything less than bliss! There is a little Heaven, a
compendious, compressed, essential Heaven which God drops into that
soul that lives with Him, so that we know that which makes us leap for
joy and makes us bless God that we were ever created! If I had no God,
I could say, "Cursed was the day in which it was said to my mother that
a man-child was born into the world." But now I thank God for my
existence! Sometimes, when in great pain and anguish, yet having God
with me, I have felt inclined not to curse the day of my birth, but to
rejoice that I was ever born, even if I had to live a life of perpetual
pain, seeing that I have a God who is, indeed, my own!

To have a God also means that you have a grand objective in life. Look
at many of you, how you work hard from morning to night just to provide
enough to keep body and soul together. If you have not a God, you are
wretched creatures, indeed! But the slave who tugs at the oar of the
galley and receives no pay but the cruel lash, is a happy and blessed
man if God is with him! Many and many a Huguenot prisoner, condemned
for life to the galleys because of his faith, has been happier than the
king upon his throne who thrust him there! With God, all conditions of
life become life that is life, indeed–but without Him, there is
nothing to live for! Here is a poor fellow who lives till he has
accumulated millions– it must be all the harder to die and leave so
much, must it not? What is the good of it? To get a paragraph in the
Illustrated London News saying that So-and-So died worth so much? Oh,
the misery of having existed for so small a result! But when you have
God, you have something to live for, something that makes every little
thing sublime and turns the most common actions of daily life into a
holy exercise of a royal priesthood unto the Most High!

The man who has God also has the explanation of a great many things
which puzzle other people and he has something better, still, for he
has his God to fall back upon when he cannot explain anything. I like,
sometimes, to have to pull up against a huge granite rock and feel, "I
never shall see through that rock and I shall never see my way through
that difficulty." Well, I do not need to see my way through it! I do
not need a tunnel from here to New Zealand–do you? I know that I
cannot go through the very heart of the earth and I have no wish to do
so. I am very glad to know that I cannot, by a stamp of my foot, force
my way through to the other side of the globe–it would be a poor globe
if I could! I would not worship a god that I could fully understand. I
do not know how I would feel devout over a faith which I perfectly
comprehended. If I could put my religion into my pocket, like a box of
lozenges, I should soon suck it all away, but I like something that is
grander than my loftiest thought, more sublime than my noblest
conceptions, and which tops me altogether! And I find it a blessed
thing in life, when troubled with all these difficult problems of our
teeming population and ever-present distress, to fall back upon this
fact–"There is a God who will overrule it all and, from the seeming
evil, will produce a good–and from that good something better, to His
own praise and glory!"

A man with God–you may strip him, but he is clothed in the Light of
God. A man with God–you may shut him up in prison, but he is perfectly
at liberty, for his spirit soars into the immensities! A man with
God–he may be afflicted with a hundred diseases at once, but he has
the best of all health, even the sanity of his soul! A man with God has
a window to his room–a man without God goes round, and round, and
round, and looks, but does not see anything at all! Sometimes he
thinks, "I wish that I could see something, but there is nothing to be
seen." To those who are without God, the future is all a blank–they
call themselves "agnostics"–that is, men who do not know anything. But
you who have God look for eternal life in His Presence. If men talk to
you of joy, you say, "Oh, yes, there must be joy to one who is at peace
with God. It cannot be that any man who loves God and is reconciled to
Him, should be perpetually unhappy!" That cannot be, so that, in
knowing God, there springs up in the man's heart a hope, no, an
assurance that it must be well with his soul and that, though Heaven
and earth should pass away, God's Word can never pass away and,
therefore, the safety of the man who clings to that Word must be
secure! Yes, to know the only true God is to get where life is life, to
get into eternal life–not mere existence, but into that which is
worthy to be called life, indeed!

II. Now, dear Brothers and Sisters, in the second place, notice that
ETERNAL LIFE ALSO CONSISTS IN THE

KNOWLEDGE OF JESUS CHRIST, WHOM GOD HAS SENT–"This is life eternal,
that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You
have sent."

Our second text shows that the first one by no means implies that Jesus
Christ is not God, for it expressly declares, concerning Jesus Christ,
"This is the true God, and eternal life." This is the teaching of both
passages. It would not be eternal life to know God apart from Christ.
God the Father, apart from Jesus Christ, is just an Almighty Being
infinitely just, whose Laws I have violated–a Being infinitely loving,
who would bless me, but who cannot do so while I violate His Laws–a
God full of tremendous power and unerring wisdom who would exercise all
these for me but that I, having broken His Law, the penalties of that
Law are inevitable, and cannot be reversed! It was wise and just on
God's part to append a penalty to sin–nothing could be crueler than to
allow men to sin without being punished for it! It would be abhorrent
to a God of Love as much as to a God of Justice if sin could be made a
trifle and there were no punishment attached to it. The first knowledge
you and I ever get of God, when we come to know Him, is as One who is
infinitely loving, but who, nevertheless, no, who, for that very
reason, is infinitely Just and must punish sin.

No one knows the true God in the real sense of knowledge except through
Jesus Christ, for no man comes unto the Father but by the Son. But even
if he could know God, in a measure, apart from the Revelation of Him in
Christ Jesus, it would be a knowledge of terror that would make him
flee away and avoid God! It would not be life to our souls to know God
apart from His Son, Jesus Christ! We must know the Christ whom He has
sent or our knowledge does not bring eternal life to us. But, Beloved,
when we see God in Christ meeting us, demanding a penalty and yet
providing it, Himself, decreeing the punishment most justly and then
bearing it Himself. When we see Him to be both Judge and Expiation,
both Ruler and Sacrifice, then we see that "herein is love, not that we
loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the
Propitiation for our sins." Then it is, in the knowledge of God in
Christ and God through Christ, that we find that we have entered into
eternal life!

Let me add, here, that it would not be eternal life to know Jesus
Christ if He were not God–if, as some say, He was only a good
man–that He was only a good man is impossible, for He was the worst of
impostors if He was not God, for He spoke of Himself as God! And if He
were not Divine, then He imposed on men. If He were nothing but a mere
man, how could He give us eternal life? And of what use were trust in
Him? But if He who bled on Calvary was very God of very God, as well as
Man, then the sacrifice He offered has an infinite value about it and
I, even I, dare trust my soul to Him with the full assurance that there
must be, in such a Savior, ability to save to the uttermost all them
that come unto God by Him!

How do we come to know Christ? I do not think it necessary, at this
time, to explain much about how we know Christ, because I am addressing
thousands of persons who do know Him. Brothers and Sisters, you know
Christ in the glory of His Divine Person, God and Man. You have no
doubts about either His Deity or His Humanity–you have tasted of the
sympathy that comes to you through His Manhood, and you have felt the
majesty of His Godhead–He is to you your Brother and yet your God! You
know Him, then, in the glory of His Person.

You also know Him in the peace-speaking power of His precious blood.
This is, to me, the best evidence of the Truth of our holy religion. I
was once troubled and tossed to and fro, driven almost to despair under
a sense of sin–it was only when I understood Christ's substitutionary
Sacrifice and realized that He stood in my place and bore my sin in His
own body on the Cross that I obtained peace with God! I know the power
of His blood by the peace it brought me! Do not many of you know it
also? I am sure that many of you do. Whenever sin returns to assail you
and you get troubled and perplexed, do you not go and look, again, to
Christ upon the Cross, and all your anxiety disappears? The wounds of
Jesus bleed a balsam that heals your wounds! And His death yields the
life that delivers you from going down to death!

We also know Christ in the perfection of His righteousness. By faith we
have put on that glorious robe and we have gone in unto God with our
Brother's garments on–and the Lord has accepted us for His sake–and
we have come from the Divine Presence exceedingly comforted and
blessed, "accepted in the Beloved." We know, dear Friends, now, what
communion with God means. I have never seen Him, but I know Him better
than anybody I ever saw! I have never heard His voice, nor do I expect
to hear it till these ears are deaf in the grave, unless the Lord
should first come suddenly, but I know His voice better than I know the
voice of anyone on earth! I can discern it in a moment. A stranger will
I not follow, for I know not the voice of strangers, but if there is
any Truth of God uttered, I know that Truth by a kind of instinct
within my soul. The charm of it is that Jesus has spoken it and it
commands my immediate loyal acceptance. Question anything Christ has
said? Brethren, if I find Christ contradicting everything that I ever
thought of, or any decision I had arrived at, I would, without regret,
fling every thought in my mind to the winds–and I would embrace each
syllable that He has spoken with a joy most intense and a loyalty that
never questions!

I have heard of "life in London." I do not know much about what that
expression means, but I know what life in Christ is, and there is
nothing like it! Life in Heaven is only life in Christ–if He were gone
from the realms of bliss, there would be no life in Heaven, itself–the
center, the core, the soul of the everlasting joy of the redeemed lies
in the fact of Christ being with them and their knowing Him! This is
life eternal, to know Jesus Christ whom God has sent, and to know God
in Him.

This will give you life, you daughters of despair who are at death's
dark door–know God and Christ and you shall live! This will give you
life, you disappointed ones, to whom life seems to be like a sucked
orange which you would gladly throw away! This will be the cup of life,
again, and put into it the nectar of true life. This will give you
something to trust in! This will give you rest to your spirit, this
will give you power for service, this will give you a holy expectancy
for the world to come! In fact, everything that life means comes to the
man who knows God and knows Christ–and everything that death means
comes to the man who does not know God, and does not know Christ–he is
dead even while he continues to exist.

I have finished all my discourse but for one fragment. Did you notice
the last clause in our second text? "This is the true God, and eternal
life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols." Do you see the
drift of the Apostle's injunction?

You live by the true God, you live by Jesus Christ–therefore, keep
yourselves from idols. Idols are untrue gods and they are death to you.
Therefore, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols."

Of course, I need not say to you that we must carefully preserve our
integrity in the matter of worshipping anything that can be seen. No
child of God may dare to worship a picture, an image, or anything that
is visible! I would like to break out of every church window every
image of the saints, lest it should be worshipped–and especially to
banish from all public observation every symbol and sign that ever has
been worshipped in the Church of Rome lest they should be worshipped
again! I see, in the symbolism of certain churches, a tendency to set
up something visible as an object of worship. Remember the commandment,
"You shall have no other gods before Me," that is, have nothing to
worship but God, and then, next, "You shall not make unto you any
engraved image, or any likeness of anything that is in Heaven above, or
that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
you shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord
your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon
the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me;
and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep My
Commandments."

The worship of the cross, the crucifix, the "consecrated" bread, or
anything of that kind is sheer idolatry, and it always brings death
with it. Gospel Light dies out when anything but the true God is
worshipped. Therefore, away with idols! Have a holy iconoclastic zeal
against anything that is regarded by men with the reverence which is
due to God, alone!

But keep yourselves from all other idols–from the idols of your own
brain, from creeds of your own making, from thoughts of your own
imagining. Keep yourselves from letting anything but God rule you. Keep
yourselves from golden idols–keep yourselves from the love of fame–
keep yourselves from the adoration of human science! "Keep yourselves
from idols." There is no God but God and Christ Jesus, His Son, is the
only Mediator between God and men. Keep yourselves from allowing
anything but God to get the upper hand of you. Make not gods of
yourselves, your own persons– make not gods of your families, make not
gods of your children.

Verily, I say unto you, there are many who worship their children and
set them up as little gods! And when they are taken away from them, as
they will be when they worship them, then they cry out against God most
bitterly. How could they think that God would allow the little Dagons
to be set up in His place? It must be God first, God last, God midst,
and God, without end! May He make it so with us that, from now on, we
shall have this eternal life which consists in knowing the only true
God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent! Amen.

EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM27.

Verse 1. The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? If
all your light comes from the Father of Lights, with whom is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning, you need not be afraid of
losing your light! "The Lord is my light and my salvation." If your
salvation comes from the God of Salvation, if it is worked out by the
Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, you need not be afraid that you will
ever be robbed of that salvation–and you may confidently sing,
"Jehovah is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?"

1. The LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? "He
puts His own force into me and if He who is Omnipotent is the strength
of my life, who can stand against me? If my strength were in myself, I
might well be afraid, but if it is in God, alone, if, 'the Lord is the
strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?'" Dismiss your fears,
then, whatever may be the cause of them, all you who are trusting in
the Lord Jehovah! The causes of fear are many, but the cure of fear is
one, namely, faith in the living God!

2. When the wicked, even my enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up
my flesh, they stumbled and fell. This is the record of the Psalmist's
past experience. David was a soldier and he had a soldier's dangers and
a soldier's deliverances. And here he writes the history of his
battles. These are dispatches from the field. When the Psalmist's
enemies rushed upon him like hungry lions seeking to eat him up, they
stumbled and fell! He had not to fight, or even to sound a trumpet, for
the Lord fought for him!

3. Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear:
though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident. The
past gives him confidence both for the present and for the future.
Happy is the man who can fall back upon his past experience, not to
make of it a bed to lie upon, but to make of it a lever with which to
lift his soul out of the Slough of Despond! I think I have sometimes
said that we may use our past experiences as the bargemen use their
oars when they push backward to drive the boat forward. You must never
lie down upon past mercies and say, "I am satisfied with all that has
happened," but use the past to help you in the present and the future.

4. One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I
may dwell in the House of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold
the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in His Temple. David wanted to
spend his days in the House of his God and we, also, may do the same,
not only in the place that is used for public worship, but wherever we
may be! The great House of God is everywhere and His children can
always be at home with Him. That is the ideal of a Christian's life, to
be always in God's House–

"No more a stranger or a guest, But like a child at home."

David desired not only that he might dwell in God's House, but that he
might spend his time in adoring contemplation of the beauty of his
God–"to behold the beauty of the Lord." Did you ever think of the
wonderful beauties that there are in the Character of the Most High? If
you want to see them, behold Him who is altogether lovely, in whom the
Father is to be most clearly seen, though veiled in human flesh! This
should also be our lifelong work, to study, to understand, and to enjoy
the beauty of the Lord, "and to enquire in His Temple," not only to see
Him, but to speak with Him and to hear Him speak. A Christian is one
who makes enquiries of his God–he is an enquirer when he begins, and
he should be an enquirer till he ends. The Apostle Peter tells us that
the angels belong to the honorable company of enquirers concerning
"things that accompany salvation." "Which things the angels desire to
look into." Christian men should go to God with their enquiries and
when they come to public worship, this should be one great end of it,
"to enquire in His Temple."

5. For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion.
"For"–and this is a reason for dismissing all our fear–"in the time
of trouble He shall hide me." "I am so little that I may easily be
hidden away by One so great as God is. 'He shall hide me in His
pavilion,' in His own royal tent and beneath the majesty of His
Sovereignty my soul shall find perfect security."

5. In the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me. "In that Most Holy
Place where none can come and live but those whom God brings there! In
the sacred spot where the security must be absolute! In the Tabernacle
of Sacrifice sprinkled with the blood of Atonement, shall He hide me."
Oh, what a hiding place is this for one who is in trouble!

6. He shall set me up upon a rock. What perfect security the child of
God has, first, in the pavilion of Sovereignty, next, in the secrecy of
Sacrifice–and thirdly, on the rock of Immutability! "He shall set me
up upon a rock."

6. And now shall my head be lifted up above my enemies round about me:
therefore will I offer in His tabernacle sacrifices ofjoy; I will sing,
yes, I will sing praises unto the LORD. If an ungodly man's head were
lifted up above His enemies, he would begin to denounce them and to
curse them. But when a Believer's head is thus lifted up, he begins to
praise his God. Then are his songs louder and sweeter than they ever
were before! "I will sing, yes, I will sing praises unto the

LORD."

7. Hear, O LORD, when I cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me, and
answer me. I thought you were going to sing, David, but you are at
prayer, I see. This is how we live spiritually–we breathe in the air
by prayer, and we breathe it out by praise! This is the holy
respiration of a Christian's life! Prayer and praise must be mingled in
a divinely wise proportion and then they make a sweet incense,
acceptable to God. I hope we can say that we have never finished
praying but that we feel we must begin singing, and that we have never
finished singing but that we must begin praying! What a blessed
interchange this makes for the whole of life! "I will sing, yes, I will
sing praises unto the Lord. Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice:
have mercy, also, upon me, and answer me."

8. When You said, Seek you My face; my heart said unto You, Your face,
LORD, will I seek. The child of God knows His Father's voice and
responds to it. God's Word is like a seal and we should be like the
wax, ready to take the impress of it. "Seek you My face." "Your face,
Lord, will I seek." It is the same expression reversed, just as it is
when the seal makes an impression.

9. Hide not Your face far from me. I do not know why the translators
put in that word, "far." It is printed in italics, but it should not be
there at all! "Hide not Your face from me at all, my Lord. I do not ask
You not to hide it far from me, but I pray You not to hide it at all!
Make no break in my sunlight. Let me always see You–this is all I ask.
Hide not Your face from me."

9. Put not Your servant away in anger. "Put not Your servant away." God
will not put away His children, but He does, sometimes, put His
servants away. I know that this is often a prayer of mine. I wonder
whether it is yours also– "Dismiss me not from Your service, Lord." We
may remain His children and yet we may scarcely be fit to be employed,
any longer, in His service. Let this be your prayer as well as David's,
"Put not Your servant away in anger."

9. You have been my help. "Yes, that You have, O Lord! You have been my
help."

9, 10. Leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation. When my
father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up. There
is a poor child and his father and mother have both gone away and left
him. But the Divine Father comes along, picks the child up and clasps
him to His bosom–"Then the Lord will take me up." It is a wonderful
thing to be taken up by God! A man prospers in business and people say,
"Oh, yes, he may get on very well, for such-and-such a great man has
taken him up!" But how much better shall you and I prosper who can say,
"The Lord will take me up"? If He has taken us up, what a wonderful
Patron we have! There is no other like the Lord!

11. Teach me Your way, O LORD. "I am only a child. Teach me, Lord. I am
fatherless and motherless. Take me into Your orphanage and teach me
Your way, O Lord!"

11. And lead me in a plain path, because of my enemies. "Make my way to
be very straightforward! May my life be such that I never have to
apologize for it! May there be no places in it about which unpleasant
questions can be asked! Lead me in a plain path because of my enemies.
If they can find fault with me, they will do so and if they cannot
rightly find fault with me, they will make up some accusation against
me. Therefore, O Lord, 'lead me in a plain path because of my
enemies.'"

12, 13. Deliver me not over unto the will of my enemies: for false
witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty. I
had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in
the land of the living. Men say that "seeing is believing," but that is
not true–believing is seeing! So David says, "I had fainted unless I
had believed to see." It is by believing that we see "the goodness of
the Lord in the land of the living."

14. Wait on the LORD. I think I hear David say this short sentence to
each one in this great assembly tonight, "Wait on the Lord."

14. Be of good courage and He shall strengthen your heart: wait, I say.
David says it from his own experience and thus, as it were, puts his
name and seal at the end of the Psalm–"Wait, I say"–

14. On the LORD. Everyone who has ever proven the power of prayer may
use the same words as David did! The preacher certainly does and with
the Psalmist, he exclaims, "Wait, I say, on the Lord."