Psalm 84:11 For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. I. Viewing the promise as ON THE SIDE OF GOD, and of His condescension to us His guilty creatures, we may trace it in its source, and in the manner of its fulfilment. 1. Absolutely, grace and glory are the Lord's; being of the essence of His nature; his property and possession. 2. Relatively to us, grace and glory are the Lord's to give; He has them so that He may give them. 3. Grace and glory are given from the Father through the Son. 4. Grace and glory are given from the Father through the Son by the Spirit. II. Consider it now ON THE SIDE OF MAN, and his need of God. 1. What are the aspects of our condition that make the assurance peculiarly suitable to our case? (1) We find no favour, no grace, in the eyes of God. On the contrary, we are the objects of His just displeasure; guilty; condemned. (2) In this condition, we have no fitness or qualification for being advanced by God to any post of honour, or distinguished by any special marks of His confidence and approval; no capacity of being glorified. (3) In this predicament of estrangement and dishonour we are helpless; without any means of extricating or raising ourselves. 2. What more suitable, — what more necessary, — than this promise — "The Lord will give grace and glory"? A right princely and royal gift! And a right princely and royal act to make it absolutely a free gift! It is a procedure worthy of God. And it is the only procedure that could really meet our case. Of His own free will begat He us by the Word. Of His own free will He called us in His Gospel. Of His own free will He puts His Holy Spirit within us, and works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. III. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN GRACE AND GLORY, and the dependence of the one upon the other. 1. Grace comes before glory; and only through grace can glory be reached. Grace first, and then glory. It must be so. Vain will you seek to commend yourselves to God, and win a character and name before Him, if you are not first found willing to be debtors to His mercy and sovereign grace, His full and free mercy. 2. Glory comes after grace; and grace is in order to glory. Why would you have the Lord to give you grace? Is it that you may hopefully press on to glory? Grace is the means to glory. Do you so regard it? Are you anxious, not merely about your personal rest, and ease, and comfort, but about your being put in a position and receiving power to serve the Lord freely, and to enjoy Him fully? 3. Grace implies glory (Philippians 1:6; Romans 8:29, 80). What gracious soul is in heaviness through manifold affliction? Let him not faint. Let him seek grace to hold on, in the confident belief that the Lord, giving the grace he seeks, will give the glory for which he is content to wait. 4. Grace prepares for glory; and the proportion of grace determines the proportion of glory; or, to put it in a pointed form, the more grace the more glory. 5. The seals of grace are the pledges of glory. This is doubly true. It is true of the inward seal of grace, which is the Holy Ghost in the heart, and of the outward seals of grace, which are the holy sacraments in the Church. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. |
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