God’s Thoughts and Ours

God's Thoughts and Ours

(No. 3246)

A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 1911.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, MARCH
19, 1868.

"How precious also are Your thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the
sum of them!" Psalm 139:17.

[Another Sermon by Mr. Spurgeon upon verses 17 and 18 is #2609, Volume
45–OUR THOUGHTS ABOUT GOD'S THOUGHTS.]

IT is very comforting to us to believe in a personal God and to be able
to confide in One who condescends to think lovingly of us, considers
our needs and supplies them. It would not be very comforting to us to
believe in a mere abstract Deity, or in what some people call, "the
laws of Nature" acting by themselves apart from God, or in a fixed fate
that would crush us like some colossal car of Juggernaut. Yet some
people seem to be always struggling to get away from the thought of one
true personal God–Creator, Preserver, Redeemer and All-in-All to His
people. Those who deny the Inspired record of the Creation would have
us believe that we are descended from monkeys, or from something with
even less intelligence than an ape possesses! But I could gather no
comfort from such a belief as that if it were true. It fills me rather
with pity or contempt for those who can be so foolish as to cherish
such a delusion. But when I come back to the Revelation of the Bible
concerning a personal God–a Revelation which has been confirmed by my
own spiritual experience–and when I realize that this personal God
takes a special interest in me and thinks of me with tender, loving,
gracious consideration, then I lift up my hands in adoring wonder and
say, as David did, "How precious also are Your thoughts unto me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!" Yes, there is great comfort in being
able truthfully to say, "Our Father, who are in Heaven"–and those who
are really the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty find it to be
their chief delight that He thinks about them and plans all that is for
their present and eternal good!

I. Coming to our text, I ask you to consider, first, HOW PRECIOUS ARE
GOD'S THOUGHTS OF US AND HOW PRECIOUS IT IS TO US TO THINK ABOUT THESE
THOUGHTS.

First of all, let me say that the very fact that God thinks of us is,
in itself precious. Perhaps someone here says, "It is not so in my
case! I am quite alarmed at the thought that God thinks about me. It is
no comfort to me to say, 'You, God, see me.' Such a thought as that
only fills me with terror." I can quite understand, dear Friend, how
you feel. Of course, if you only think of God as if He were an officer
of justice with a warrant for your apprehension, it would be a dreadful
thing for you to realize that He is thinking of you. But suppose you
were His child–would it not then be a continual joy to you to reflect
that your heavenly Father was constantly thinking of you? If you were
completely reconciled to Him by the death of His Son. If no
consciousness of guilt remained upon your conscience. If you knew that
all God's thoughts concerning you were thoughts of love–then you would
bless His name that He was so gracious and kind as to think of you!

Further, those who are serving the Lord delight to remember that He is
thinking of them. After we have been reconciled to God, it becomes our
great privilege to spend such strength as we have in promoting His
Glory. Well, no one is ashamed of being sent on a good errand! The eyes
of God, instead of being dreadful to the man whose heart is right with
Him, is one of His greatest encouragements! He feels that though his
fellow men may never say, "Well done, good and faithful servant," it
will be enough for him to know that God has seen him, that God keeps a
Book of Remembrances, and that, at the last, a full reward, not of
debt, but of Grace, shall be given to him who is faithful. I do not
know how it is with you idle professors who profess to be saved, but
who do little or nothing for Christ–I do not see how the fact that God
is observing you can give you any comfort. If it is true that you are
not your own, but that you are bought with

a price, even with the precious blood of Jesus, as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot, can you calmly think of God watching your
idle hours, listening to your many words that have no weight, no value
in them and noting how you neglect your many opportunities of serving
your day and generation? But, on the other hand, in proportion as you
are constrained by the love of Christ to be instant in season and out
of season, in the same proportion will it be sweet to you to remember
that the Lord is observing you and that He is always at your right hand
to help you in your service for Him!

We also learn the preciousness of God's thoughts to us as we depend
implicitly upon Him as the great Lord of Providence. It is of little
use to you to have anyone thinking of you if his thoughts never bring
you any practical help. But if you have a rich friend who has promised,
as soon as possible, to find you a position in which you will be
provided for as long as you live, I would not be surprised to hear that
even while you have been at this service, you have been gratefully
thinking of him. "Yes," you have been saying, "I could not make my way
on my own account, but I have a friend at my back who says that he will
see that I shall never be in need–and it comforts me to think that he
is thinking of me." Well then, if the promise of an earthly
friend'affords so much consolation as that, how much more should this
be the case with you who have a heavenly Friendwho is both able and
willing to fulfill all His promises? He is always thinking of what is
best for you–what you require today and what you will require
tomorrow–He is always anticipating your needs, providing Elims, with
wells and palm trees while you are travelling through the desert. And
as you meditate upon the way in which He is thinking of how He shall
bless, perfect and glorify you, His thoughts must, indeed, be precious
to you!

One reason why God's thoughts concerning us are peculiarly precious is
that gracious men long to get near to God. They are not satisfied with
what they are. The wanderings of their thoughts towards inferior
objects are a burden to them and they are continually longing to get
nearer to God. If there is one cry that rises more frequently to our
lips than any other, it is this–

"Nearer, my God, to You, Nearer to You!"

But, alas, our thoughts of God are a very poor help to us in drawing us
nearer to Him! They flag, tire and soon die–but the thoughts of God
toward us are strong, like God, Himself, is–and these, like so many
unbreakable cords firmly fastened to us, are drawing us always nearer
to Him! Thought leads to action and God's thinking of us leads to the
practical action of drawing us nearer to Himself. So the fact that He
is continually thinking of us encourages us to believe that we shall
one day be close to Him and be qualified to be close to Him–being
perfectly conformed to the image of Christ– and drawn into the closest
possible fellowship with God.

And the nearer we get to God, the more precious will His thoughts of us
become to us. If we were not such babes in Christ and so carnal, we
would prize every crumb from our Father's table–and much more–every
thought from our Father's mind! We would prize, far above gold and
rubies, what I may call the ordinary outgoings of the Divine mind in
His Providential arrangements for us. But much more should we value
those deep, eternal, infinite thoughts which have already secured our
salvation and which shall, before long, complete our sanctification and
our glorification, too!

II. Now, secondly, there are SOME POINTS IN CONNECTION WITH GOD'S
THOUGHTS OF US WHICH RENDER THEM ALL THE MORE PRECIOUS TO US.

And, first, let us remember that God's thoughts of us are everlasting.
When we begin to think of Jehovah's thoughts of love concerning His
people, we have to go back beyond the region of time and get where all
dates are lost in the shoreless sea of eternity! Beloved, you were
loved of your God long before He created the world! Yes, from
everlasting He had thoughts of love toward you–then must not those
thoughts be, indeed, precious to you? Besides, as they were from
eternity, so they will be toeternity–God will still be thinking
lovingly of you when sun, moon and stars have fulfilled their mission
and been forgotten–and when all things which men now count solid and
lasting shall have dissolved like the bubble upon the billow's crest
and passed away forever! God has so linked you with His Son that He has
made you also to have a life which is eternal and which can never die.
Let all things perish and the pillars of the universe crumble and
decay, and the whole visible creation fall with thunderous crash, yet
you, the Beloved of the Lord, shall dwell safely with Him!–

"Far from a world of grief and sin With God eternally shut in."

His thoughts will always be directed towards you, He will never forget
you! There has never been a moment in the past when He did not think of
you. Even in your years of sin, He looked upon you with an eye of pity.
In your deepest depres-

sion His heart was full of sympathy for you. Never has there been an
hour, in the silent watches of the night, or amid the cares and
businesses of the day, in which He has not always been thinking of you
just as much as if you were the only being He had ever created! The
Lord has from the first been looking upon you and thinking of you as
though you were the sole center of His undivided attention–and so will
He continue to think of you incessantly!

The Lord's thoughts of you are especially precious because they have
always been thoughts of love. Even when you were dead in trespasses and
sins and He hated your sins, He did not hate you, for He had loved you
with an everlasting love–

"He saw you ruined in the Fall, Yet loved you, notwithstanding all. He
saved you from your lost estate, His loving kindness oh, how great!"

This is the love of which Paul wrote to the Ephesians, "His great love
wherewith He loved us even when we were dead in sins."And ever since
your conversion, God's thoughts concerning you have been thoughts of
love. He has smitten you sorely until you have felt that surely He must
be your enemy, but it was not so–never has there been anything but
love for you in the great eternal heart of God. If–

"With afflictions He may scourge us, Send a cross for every day"– this
is not a proof of His anger toward us–on the contrary, it is a token
of His affection–

"All to make us

Sick of self, and fond of Him."

Besides this, God's thoughts of us have always been wise thoughts. They
have not been such casual thoughts as pass through men's minds while
journeying quickly by road or rail and merely noticing this object here
and that other object over yonder. But God's thoughts have infinitely
more in them than the deepest thoughts of men can ever have. You know
that there are many ways of thinking of a certain thing–you may think
of it in such a way as just to keep it in remembrance, or you may think
of it so intently as to lie awake at night, turning it over in your
mind, looking at it from all points of view so that you may understand
it in all its bearings. You may think of it with the careful
consideration that a barrister gives to an important case for which he
is about to plead, or that an inventor gives to the intricate details
of a machine that he is seeking to perfect. Such consideration as that,
only of an infinitely higher order, God gives to every one of His
people! He is continually arranging that which is most for the good in
His Providential dealings with them and constantly thinking and working
on their behalf with the ultimate view of bringing many sons unto
Glory. God's thoughts are always wise, but they are so high above our
thoughts that we cannot attain to them! Yet the more we are able to
comprehend them, the more wisdom and prudence shall we perceive in
them.

Once more, these thoughts of God towards us are pre-eminently
practical. God so thought of you, Brothers and Sisters in Christ, as to
ordain you unto eternal life! Concerning the whole Church of the living
God this decree was pronounced, "They shall be Mine, says the Lord of
Hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels." Not only was there a
Divine Decree concerning them, but there was an Eternal Covenant made
between the Father and the Son by which the everlasting salvation of
all the chosen is Infallibly secured! More than that, in the fullness
of time, those eternal thoughts of love took practical effect in the
gift of God's only-begotten and well-beloved Son to die for His people,
"the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." These
thoughts of God further took effect by the coming into our hearts of
the Holy Spirit so that now, through His Divine power and energy, we
have been converted, renewed in the spirit of our minds, helped thus
far towards Heaven and comforted with the full assurance that we shall,
in due time, be brought into our heavenly Father's immediate Presence,
unblemished and complete! So you see, Beloved, that the thoughts of God
toward us should be exceedingly precious to us because they are of such
a practical character that they bring to us all the blessings–temporal
and spiritual–which we daily enjoy.

III. Now, thirdly, let us briefly notice SOME TIMES WHEN GOD'S THOUGHTS
ARE PECULIARLY PRECIOUS TO US.

It is so when we have been betrayed and deserted by some in whom we
have confided. When he that ate bread with us has lifted up his heel
against us, then we turn to our ever-faithful Friend and we rejoice to
know that His thoughts con-

cerning us are never false and treacherous! He is the Friend who sticks
closer than a brother. He is always true even though everyone else
should prove to be a liar. Ahithopel may forsake his king, Judas may
betray his Lord and we, in our measure, may know what it is to be
forsaken and betrayed–but God's thoughts towards us shall, all the
while, be thoughts of love and faithfulness! Vain was the trust we
reposed in some who went out from us because they were not of us! But
God has never forsaken us, He has always been thinking of us for good
and, therefore, His thoughts are peculiarly precious to us.

So are they also when we are neglected by our fellow Christians and by
others who ought to esteem us. It must be very hard to continue toiling
on in some obscure sphere without having a kind word or a cheering
smile from anyone– to be living, perhaps, as a servant in a family and
striving to do your duty faithfully–yet never meeting with the
slightest encouragement from those at the head of the household. Or to
be earnestly working as a Bible-woman or a city missionary in some back
district and having so little success that your superintendent looks
upon you as if you were doing nothing! I can imagine how painful this
must be to your sensitive spirit and how comforting it is to you to
think, "Well Jesus knows all about it and Hsthoughts are worth far more
than the thoughts of men, for He can read my heart and He can see that
it is love to Him that constrains me to do what I can in His service.
Men may call me a fool, but if my Master knows that I only desire to be
a fool for His sake–if He considers that I am faithfully serving Him
to the best of my ability–how precious will His thoughts be to me!"

This is also especially the case when our words and actions are
misconstrued and misrepresented. Some of us know what this trial means.
When we have tried to be disinterested and have really been so, men
have said that we have acted from some sinister motive. When we have
spoken with the utmost plainness and simplicity, we have often been
misunderstood and, worse than that, we have been willfully
misrepresented! Well, what then? Our heavenly Father knows the
sincerity of our motives and the meaning of our words, so we take the
whole case away from this lower court where human tongues jangle and
cause strife, and we appeal to the Supreme Court of King's Bench in
Heaven! Our petition is, "O Lord, You give the verdict in this case!
You know who has desired to serve You faithfully and to speak Your
Truth with courage! You give a righteous decision which none can
deny!"At such times as these, the fact that God thinks upon us is
peculiarly precious to us.

So is it in times of perplexity when we are, as Bunyan said, "all
tumbled up and down in our thoughts." I suppose, dear Friend, you
sometimes get into such a condition that although you have all the
forces of Omnipotence at your disposal, you are so distracted that you
do not know how to make use of them. You are in a place where two seas
meet– wave upon wave rolls over you and you fear that you will be
overwhelmed. You do not know what to do! You cannot think of any way of
escape out of your perplexity. Well then, do not try to do it–cease
from even thinking about the matter and refer it to the Great Thinker
who can bring good out of evil, light out of darkness and order out of
confusion!

God's thoughts are also precious to us when our own thoughts are bright
and cheerful. The genuine Christian does not run to his God merely in
his times of trouble, but he delights himself in the Lord at all times,
and under all circumstances! He thinks of Him when he is in the land of
drought, but he does not forget Him in the land of peace and plenty,
for he sings then–

"If peace and plenty crown my days They help me, Lord, to speak Your
praise."

Let your brightest thoughts, Beloved, always be those that concern your
Lord! And above all the joys of earth let this joy rise to the very
zenith–that your heavenly Father thinks of you! This is a better
fortune for you than thousands of gold and silver! This is a better
protection for you than the friendship of ten thousand times ten
thousand earthly friends! This a greater consolation than all the
comforts of time can ever afford you! In your brightest hours,
Believer, I hope that you will still say with the Psalmist, "How
precious also are Your thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of
them!"

IV. My time has gone, but I want to give you just A FEW PRACTICAL
OBSERVATIONS ARISING OUT OF THIS SUBJECT.

The first is this–if God's thoughts are so precious to us, how very
precious His Words ought to be! Here, in this Inspired Volume, you have
the thoughts of the Divine Thinker, Incarnated, if I may use the word
in that sense and, therefore, I would have you prize very highly every
Word in this blessed Book. There are many, nowadays, who refuse to be-

lieve in the verbal Inspiration of the Scriptures, but I fail to see
how the sense of Scripture can be Inspired if the Words in which that
sense is expressed are not also Inspired! I believe that the very
Words, in the original Hebrew and Greek, were revealed from Heaven! And
notwithstanding every objection that can be brought from any quarter, I
have never been able to get away from the firm belief that if I give up
my Master's Words, I give up His thoughts, also. I cannot well love a
man's soul without having an affection for his body, also. And I cannot
love God's thoughts, which are the soul of His Revelation, without
loving the Words which are the body in which it comes to us. Do not
tamper with the Words of Scripture, nor even with a single letter of
it, but say, "How precious also are Your Words unto me, O God!" Have we
not known times when the blessing which we have derived from a text has
come to our hearts, not so much from the main thought contained in it,
as from the use of one special Word? Some of us, on turning to our
Greek Testaments, have been perfectly astounded to find that a
particular Word has been used which has exactly met the predicament in
which we have been placed–and if the Holy Spirit had moved the writer
to use any other word, it would not have been so suitable to the
circumstances in which we then were! We praise Him for selecting that
very word and not any one of its synonyms which would not so precisely
have met our case. Therefore, Brothers and Sisters in Christ, prize the
Words of God above everything else that you possess!

Oh, for more Bible reading! I fear that this is an age when almost
everything else is read except that which is most worth reading! I
believe that many professedly Christian people positively poison their
minds and stop up all the avenues of sense with the masses of sawdust,
chaff and smut that they get out of their light reading–which a man
might read to all eternity without ever being the better for it! Yet,
all the while, there are solid, sober, interesting books full of
valuable information and instruction that are left unread and, worst of
all, God's Book, the Bible, itself, is lying neglected upon the shelf!
True Bible readers and Bible searchers never find it wearisome. They
like it least who know it least and they love it most who read it most.
They find it newest who have known it longest, and they find the
pasture to be the richest whose souls have been the longest fed upon
it. When one of our missionaries had to read a certain Book of the Old
Testament through a hundred times while he was translating it, he said
that he certainly enjoyed the 100th time of reading it more than he did
the first, for he understood it better and it seemed to him to be
fuller and fresher, the more familiar he became with it.

In the next place, as God's thoughts are so precious to us, God's
actions, which spring from His thoughts, ought also to be precious to
His people. They ought to be so, but are they? Perhaps one of God's
actions has been to lay low in sickness one who is very dear to
you–can you say to God, "How precious is that action"? No. You shake
your head, for you cannot say that. Possibly you have had a great loss,
today, and that loss came by the direction of God. Now, God first
thought. Then He acted and took away something that you greatly prized.
You say that you cannot see any preciousness in that–but if you judged
according to faith, and not according to sense, you would say–"Yes,
Lord, this trial is precious to me because I believe it comes from You.
And I will not only submit to it, but I will thank You for it, and even
fall in love with the cross which You have laid on me." As we look back
over our past experience, we see how precious our trials have been to
us. Someone said, "Give me back my bed of languishing. Give me back the
aches and pains that I suffered in that long, trying illness if I may
but have such enjoyment of my Master's Presence as I had then."

Now, in closing, let me just say that as God's thoughts are so precious
to us, we should make the best return we can by thinking much of Him.
You, Believer, are married to Christ. And as your Husband is always
thinking of you, can you be content to live without thinking often of
Him? Have you lived through this day in forgetfulness of Him? Have you
been so occupied with the toils and cares of this life that you have
forgotten Him who has given you a higher, nobler and better life than
this? If that has been the case with you, then blush for very shame and
ask forgiveness of your Lord–and let this be your sincere
prayer–"Lord Jesus, You are always thoughtful of me. From now on, by
Your gracious Spirit's blessed working, make me always thinking of
You."

I fear that I am addressing a great many who do not often think of God
and that there are some of you to who it would be a comfort if there
were no God at all. Or, if you do think of Him at all, He is only an
all-powerful Being of whom you stand in dread because you fear that He
will punish you for your sins. Then take warning, by your own thoughts
of God and seek to be reconciled to Him so that you may no longer have
cause to fear His righteous anger! That reconciliation may be obtained
by simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one Mediator
between God and men! So if you put your case into His hands and ask Him
to act as your Advocate, He will, by His Spirit, reveal to you the
glorious Truth of God that the reconciliation was effected long ago,
when He laid down His life for you upon the Cross of Calvary! Then,
when you have received this blessed assurance, it shall be your
continual delight to think of God, and your constant bliss to know that
He is thinking of you. And you will say, in the words of our text, "How
precious also are Your thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of
them!"

EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM119:105-120.

We will read tonight two of the stanzas which make up the 119th Psalm,
beginning at the 105th verse. Verse 105. Your Word is a lamp unto my
feet, and a light unto my path. God's Word is full of brilliance. It is
always giving out its blessed light. It casts a light upon all our
daily life. It is a light for the house and a light for the way, and
happy is the man who never walks abroad without this lantern to light
up his pathway! There are many pitfalls on the road and many places
where the traveler's garments may soon be smeared, so he has great need
of this light to guide him.

106. I have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep Your
righteous judgments. I scarcely remember ever hearing of a man swearing
and then approving of it, but this kind of swearing is right enough–"I
have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep Your righteous
judgments." We are to determine with the most vehement resolution that,
God helping us, we will keep His righteous judgments, for if we have
only a weak resolution, we usually fall short even of our own
determination. What shall we do, then, if that determination is itself
weak? Some of us have lifted our hands to Heaven and pledged ourselves
to the living God that we will be His faithful people–

"High Heaven, that heard the solemn vow, That vow renewed shall daily
hear."

107. I am afflicted very much.Here is a good man, a better man than
most of us, a man who is determined to do right, yet he gets into
trouble because he is determined to do right. God's wheat will be
threshed. His gold will be put into the furnace. If you were worth
nothing to Him, God might not take the trouble to afflict you, but when
you are resolved to do right, you may expect that resolution to be
tried and tested! And if it is worth anything, it will stand the trial.
"I am afflicted very much"–what will be the next words, "Lord, deliver
me"? No, no! "Lord, bring me out of the furnace"? Nothing of the sort!
"I am afflicted very much"–

107. Quicken me, O LORD, according unto Your Word. "Give me more
spiritual life! Give me more spiritual strength! That is what I most
need." Oftentimes that prayer is answered by the affliction, itself–we
are afflicted very much and by that very affliction the Lord quickens
our Divine Graces, strengthens our souls, drives away many of our
wandering thoughts and brings us nearer to Himself!

108. Accept, I beseech You, the freewill offerings of my mouth, O LORD.
"My prayers, my praises, my testimonies, my ministries–accept them
all, O Lord"–

108. And teach me Your judgment. He who teaches others needs teaching
himself. He who hopes that what he says will be accepted by those who
hear it, opens his ears to hear what God says to him. There will be no
acceptance of what you say to others unless you accept what God says to
you!

109. My soul is continually in my hand. David's life was often in
jeopardy. Saul hunted him as a partridge upon the mountains and he
afterwards fled from Absalom. He was sometimes very sick and ready to
die. Perhaps also, at times, he was in such great sorrow that he felt
as if his soul was a thing that he held in his hand. We do not know
exactly where our soul is, but we usually think of it as being
somewhere in the very center of our being. David says that he had his
soul in his hand–where he might at any time lose it. But what else
does he say?

109. Yet do I not forget Your Law."If I have even to die for it, I am
willing to die for it. If I have to lay down my life because I will do
right, I will do right even while I lay down my life."

110. The wicked have laid a snare for me: yet I erred not from Your
precepts. "If I had done so, I should have been caught in their snare,
but as I kept straight on in the way of Your precepts, it little
mattered how many snares they laid for me."

111. Your testimonies have I taken as an heritage forever Some take
their own thoughts for their heritage, but it is a poor portion for
anyone to have. Some take other men's philosophies for their heritage,
but such a heritage as that is soon gone. But some of us can say, with
regard to the Eternal and Immutable Truth of God, that we have got such
a grip of it that we cannot give it up! There may come a thousand other
changes but, by God's Grace, there will be no change in this matter!
"Your testimonies have I taken as an heritage forever."

111. For they are the rejoicing of my heart [See Sermon #2415, Volume
41–THE BELIEVER'S HERITAGE OF JOY.] Well may a man love that which
rightly makes him glad. Shall we ever forsake that which is the source
of our greatest comfort? If some men had greater gladness in the
Gospel, they would be more true to it. If they had ever eaten the
sweet, and enjoyed the fat things full of marrow, they would never go
away from the old old Gospel which has made their hearts so glad!

112, 113. I have inclined my heart to perform Your statues always, even
unto the end. I hate vain thoughts: but Your Law do I love.Notice that
the word, "vain," is not in the original. The Psalmist wrote, "I hate
thoughts," yet the word for thoughtsincludes the idea of mere thoughts.
So, if any teaching in the world is the result of human thought, alone,
you may not rely upon it for a moment, for the Lord knows the thoughts
of man, that "they are vanity," and they never will be anything better
than that. The thoughts even of the most profound and the best
instructed of men will not bear the weight and pressure of an immortal
soul's eternal interests! Revelation is the one reliable thing that we
can rest upon. What God has spoken is all true, but as for what men
have thought, I have been so often disappointed and deceived that I can
say with the Psalmist, "I hate mere thoughts, but Your Law do I love."
In the Law of the Lord there are verities, certainties,
immutabilities–here may we abide and rest securely!

114. You are my hiding place and my shield: I hope in Your Word. For
You will be sure to do as You have said. Your promises are not like
men's–they cannot be broken–and when I get one of Your promises, O my
God, I hide behind it, I am protected by it and I am comforted through
it.

115. Depart from me, you evildoers: for I will keep the commandments of
my God. Holy men often find that in order to be holy, they have to be
solitary. It sometimes happens that the force of evil companionship is
too much for the gracious heart to bear–and the Christian has to say
to the ungodly, "Depart from me." Now, if even godly David had to say
to evildoers, "Depart from me," you need not wonder that the Lord Jesus
Christ will one day say to all impenitent men, "Depart from Me, you
evildoers." If we keep the commandments of our God, we shall often have
to walk in a separate path from the ungodly. And even if we do not keep
ourselves to ourselves, we shall keep ourselves to our God.

116. Uphold me I thought we should soon come to that petition. We have
been reading about David's resolutions and we might have thought that
he was too bold in speaking so positively, but now he shows us the
modesty of his mind–"Uphold me"–

116. According unto Your Word, that I may live. The Lord upholds us as
a nurse holds up a little child and teaches him to walk. 'Uphold me,' O
Lord, for I cannot stand by myself. My good resolutions will soon
evaporate unless You sustain me." There is a gracious promise which
just answers this petition, "I will uphold you with the right hand of
My righteousness."

116. And let me not be ashamed of my hope."O my God, never let me have
to say that I have hoped in You in vain! I know I never shall, but I
trust to You not to disappoint me. Cast me not off in the time of old
age! Forsake me not when my strength fails me!"

117. Hold You me up [See Sermon #1657, Volume 28–MY HOURLY PRAYER.]
One is fond of that short, simple prayer. First it is, "Uphold me," and
then, "Hold me up." Either way it is equally good–"Hold You me up"–

117. And I shall be safe: and I will have respect unto Your statutes
continually. When God holds us up, there is no fear of our falling
down! We have respect unto His statutes when He has respect unto us.

118. 119. You have trodden down all them that err from Your statutes:
for their deceit is falsehood. You put away all the wicked of the earth
like dross. Perhaps some of you have seen the great heaps of slag lying
outside the furnace. That is a picture of the ungodly–"You put away
all the wicked of the earth like dross."

119. Therefore I love Your testimonies.What? Does love to the Truth of
God and to the God of Truth spring out of this putting away of the
wicked? Yes, even the stern justice of God makes His people love Him
and love His Truth! I am of the same mind as the children of Israel
were when Pharaoh and his army were swallowed up in the Red Sea, and
the emancipated slaves sang unto the Lord who had triumphed so
gloriously. Some cannot do that because their sympathy is so entirely
with the wicked, but the destruction of all that is evil creates a flow
of joy in the heart of the true Believer! Still, it is a fearsome joy,
full of holy awe and trembling!

120. My flesh trembles for fear of You; and I am afraid of Your
judgments. Well may we also tremble when we see how terrible God is out
of His holy places! There is a fear which is akin to love. As there is
a fear which perfect love casts out, so is there another fear which
love dandles on her knee–and such is the fear which David felt. May
we, too, always have that holy awe of God in our hearts! Amen.