Psalm 73:28 But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all your works. I. IT WILL ESTABLISH YOUR CONFIDENCE IN GODLINESS AS A REALITY. Nearness to God is nearness to all that is good; for "with Him is the fountain of life." Nearness to God is nearness to the object to which all religious institutions are designed to bring you: it is this that explains their meaning, and in this they gain their end. Nearness to God is nearness to religious truth, which is the animating soul of all these institutions; nearness to that truth, not in intellectual perception merely, but in an experimental, sense of its sweetness and efficacy. II. IT WILL RECTIFY YOUR ESTIMATE OF TERRESTRIAL THINGS. It is in the mount of communion with God that you are drawn away from the sordid and the grovelling, and made to soar to the spiritual and the heavenly. There your range of view is exceedingly widened; your souls are elevated, enlarged, and filled; things unseen and eternal are realized in their transcendent greatness and importance, and things seen and temporal sink into insignificance; the sublime of heaven expands before you, and reveals earth in its littleness, and you say (Psalm 17:14, 15). III. IT WILL FORTIFY YOUR MINDS IN THE HOUR OF TEMPTATION. What is the design of every temptation? To seduce from God. In nearness to Him, therefore, you are keeping your ground; you are resisting and overcoming. You are verifying what is said of the child of God (1 John 5:18). IV. IT WILL QUICKEN YOUR SPIRITUAL DESIRES. This is a thing of great importance. Just as your spiritual desires are, so is your spiritual health: when they are languid, it is infirm; when they are lively, it is vigorous. Again, just as your spiritual desires are, so is your affection to the things of earth: when they are keen, it is dull; when they are weak, it is strong. Moreover, just as your spiritual desires are, so is your spiritual prosperity as a whole; so is your growth in grace, and so is your spiritual enjoyment. It is of the nature of grace in the heart, that the more it enjoys, it craves the more; and the more it has of the best of earth, it longs the more for the bliss of heaven. V. IT WILL AUGMENT YOUR CHRISTIAN USEFULNESS. The fit agent for rousing con. sciences, and moving hearts, and winning souls, is the man that comes forth from the presence-chamber of the King, with the atmosphere of "the Holiest" about him, and his own face shining with the lustre of the glory of God upon it. To conclude: see from this subject — 1. One thing about godliness which we should keep prominently before our minds. The good that is in it, and that flows from it. 2. One reason why we so much underrate the future world. It is because we so much overrate the present. 3. Who the safest and happiest man among us is. The man who is nearest to his God. 4. The mistake of those who make communion with God to consist chiefly in pleasing feeling. They will have the way to heaven to be heaven itself. 5. What to look for after those days of high privilege we have been seeing. The full harvest of those blessed fruits or effects of "drawing near to God," of some of which we have now been speaking, is yet to be reaped. Let us take good heed to ourselves that we reap this harvest in all its fulness and preciousness. (D. Young, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all thy works. |
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