For You have delivered my soul from death, and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of life. Sermons
I. FOR THANKFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF GOD'S MERCIES. The eye is upon the past, and as the memory calls up God's deeds of love, the heart glows with gratitude. "I will render praises unto thee." How just and reasonable! - "For thou hast delivered my soul from death." II. EARNEST PRAYER TO GOD FOR SPIRITUAL HELP. The future has its dangers. The biographies of good men, our own experiences, and the circumstances of our lot, warn us that we are liable to fall. In our weakness and fear we cry to God, "Wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling?" Fails are hurtful to ourselves and to others. Therefore our cry should be the more urgent to him who is "able to keep us from falling" (Jude 1:24). The deliverances of the past are a strong plea for deliverance in the future. As Cowper has said of gifts, we may say of deliverances - "The best return for one like me, So wretched and so poor, Is from his gifts to draw a plea, And ask him still for more." III. RENEWAL OF OUR COVENANT ENGAGEMENTS. "Thy vows." It is well for us to consecrate ourselves afresh to God. 1. To walk before God. 2. In the light of the living. Christ is the Living One (Revelation 1:18). The saints are the living (1 Thessalonians 5:10). It is in the light of Christ, and in fellowship with his people, that we can best fulfil our course here, and best prepare for the services of eternity. How sweet the light instead of the darkness! and how blessed life instead of death! - W.F. 1. They are the mercies of God. 2. Purchased by Christ. 3. Beneficial to us.And we are to remember them admiringly and thankfully (Psalm 77:11). Affectionately; obediently and fruitfully (Psalm 116:16). Humbly: in their varied circumstances and details. II. MERCIES RECEIVED ARE ENCOURAGEMENTS TO ASK AND HOPE FOR MORE. 1. For: There is as great ability in God (Isaiah 59:2). 2. As much tenderness as before (Lamentations 3:22), 3. The same pleas to be urged in our prayers. 4. One mercy in spirituals is to no purpose without further mercies. God would not lay a foundation and not build upon it (Romans 8:32). III. IN CONCLUSION. 1. Take heed of forgetting mercies received (Jeremiah 2:2; Psalm 68:26). For if we do not remember them we shall be apt to distrust God and abate in our love (Psalm 78:19). And if we do not remember we cannot improve them, nor so easily resist temptation. 2. Make use of former mercies to encourage your trust for the future (Psalm 9:10; 1 Samuel 21:9). (S. Charnook, B. D.) I. THE MOTIVE WHICH IS TO PROMPT US TO DECISION. "Thou hast delivered my soul from death." Motive is the spring of all mental action. We are free, but we are not independent of motives, and hence Scripture continually appeals to them. And here in the great matter of personal consecration to God, what can urge us more mightily than this, that God has saved our "soul from death"? And — II. THERE IS THE OBLIGATION. "Thy vows are upon me, O Lord." You are to feel that you are the Lord's; that you are not at liberty to swear any other allegiance or enter upon any other service. You are the Lord's bondsmen. Are you ready for this? It is the highest privilege. III. THE LEGITIMATE EXPRESSION IN WHICH THIS CONSECRATION EMBODIES ITSELF. 1. In praise. The Christian's is a joyful, willing service. 2. In a desire to walk before God in the land of the living. Is this our ambition — to walk before God here and now? I trust it is, and may the ardour of your desire know no abatement or decay. (J. Morley Punshon, D. D.) II. THE IMPULSE TO SERVICE WHICH DELIVERANCE BRINGS. "That I may walk before God in the light of the living;" that is God's purpose in all His deliverances, that we may thereby be impelled to trustful and grateful service. And David makes that purpose into a vow, for the words might almost as well be translated, "I will walk before Him." Let us see to it that God's purpose is our resolve, and that we do not lose the good of any of the troubles or discipline through which He passes us; for the worst of all sorrows is a wasted sorrow. "Thou hast delivered my feet that I may walk." What are feet for? Walking! Further, notice the precise force of that phrase, "that I may walk before God." It is not altogether the same as the cognate one which is used about Enoch, that "he walked with God." The one expresses communion as with a friend; the other, the ordering of one's life before His eye, and in the consciousness of His presence as Judge and as Taskmaster. Think of what a regiment of soldiers on parade does as each file passes in front of the saluting point where the commanding officer is standing. How each man dresses up, and they pull themselves together, keeping step, sloping their rifles slightly. We are not on parade, but about business a great deal more serious than that. We are doing our fighting with the Captain looking at us, and that should be a stimulus, a joy, and not a terror. Realize God's eye watching you, and sin, and meanness, and negligence, and selfishness, and sensuality, and lust, and passion, and all the other devils that are in us will vanish like ghosts at cockcrow. III. THE REGION IN WHICH THAT OBSERVANCE OF THE DIVINE EYE IS TO BE CARRIED ON. "In the light of the living." That seems to correspond to the first clause of his hope; just as the previous word that I have been commenting upon, "walking before Him," corresponds to the second, where he speaks about his feet. "Thou hast delivered my soul from death... I will walk before Thee in the light of the living" — where Thou dost still permit my delivered soul to be. And the phrase seems to mean the sunshine of human life contrasted with the darkness of Sheol. Our brightest light is the radiance from the face of God whom we try to love and serve, and the psalmist's confidence is that a life of observance of His commandments in which gratitude for deliverance is the impelling motive to continual realization of His presence, and an accordant life, will be a bright and sunny career. You will live in the sunshine if you live before His face, and however wintry the world may be, it will be like clear, frosty day. There is no frost in the sky, it does not go above the atmosphere, and high above, in serene and wondrous blue, is the blaze of the sunshine. And such a life will be a guided life. There will still remain many occasions for doubt in the region of belief, and for perplexity as to duty. There will often be need for patient and earnest thought as to both, and there will be no lack of calls for strenuous effort of our best faculties in order to apprehend what our Guide means us to do, and where He would have us go, but through it all there will be the guiding hand. As the Master, with perhaps a glance backward to these words, said, "He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." If He is in the light let us walk in the light, and to us it will be purity, and knowledge and joy. (A. Maclaren, D. D.). Be merciful unto me, O God. Homilist. I. A BLESSED RELIGIOUS EXERCISE.1. Praying. "Be merciful unto me," etc. An epitome of all true prayer. Mercy is what we need; to remove our sense of guilt, to break our moral chains, to clear our spiritual vision, to quicken and harmoniously develop all the powers of our higher nature. 2. Trusting. "My soul trusteth in Thee." This implies — (1) (2) 3. Resolving. "Yea, in the shadow," etc. God is the natural Protector of souls. 4. Hoping (ver. 3). All godly souls are in a waiting attitude. II. A WRETCHED SOCIAL CONDITION. Among savage, crafty and deadly enemies (vers. 4, 6). That men should feel thus to their fellow-men argues two things. 1. That morally they are in an abnormal condition. 2. That sin is essentially malignant. Sin, when it enters the soul, scorches all benevolent sympathy. Sin never fails to make its subject a tormenting devil. III. A HAPPY MORAL STATE. Moral fixation, or godly decision of soul, "My heart is fixed." In our unregenerate state the heart is unsettled, divided, distracted, and herein is its misery. This fixation originates — 1. High happiness. "I will sing and give praise. Awake, psaltery and harp," etc. 2. High worship. "I will praise Thee, O Lord," etc. (Homilist.) I. THE ART OF PRAYER (vers. 1-6). Here he, first, clearly and fully describes his trouble. This is part of the art of prayer. It is often because we have nothing definite to pray about that our devotions are unsatisfactory. God is as interested in the trials of His people to-day as He was in those of David. Next, he argues his ease. And this also is part of the art of prayer. God likes us to put our intellect as well as our feeling into our prayers. His first argument is that he is trusting in God (ver. 1): he is trusting, he says, as the fledgeling cowers beneath the wing of the mother bird. Can God leave in the lurch any one who is thus depending on Him? But in verse 2 he uses a still stronger argument: he appeals to God's character, calling Him "God that performeth" — or rather perfecteth — "all things for me." God the Perfecter, who, when He has begun a good work, must finish it — how can He leave the career of His servant in its broken and incomplete condition? This is an argument we can all use, and it is one which cannot fail with God. He has now raised himself to complete confidence that God will deliver him; and to this he gives exquisite expression in the third verse, describing Mercy and Truth as two angels, whom God will send forth to rescue him from his necessities. In the same way in the 23rd psalm Goodness and Mercy are represented as attendants, following a good man all the days of his life, watching over his footsteps and always at his service. II. THE ART OF PRAISE (vers. 7-11). First, praise begins with the fixing of the heart — "My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed." The flutter of excitement is over, and he is able to collect his powers in perfect repose. But, secondly, they are not to go to sleep, though they are in repose; for he says, "Awake up, my glory; awake psaltery and harp; I myself will awake early." "My glory" is a name in Scripture for the soul, and surely a very fine one; the soul is the glory of man. But it needs to be awaked to engage in God's praise. There is music in it, as there is in a piano when it is shut; but the instrument must be opened and the keys touched. The music in our souls is allowed to slumber too much. The words, "I myself will awake early," ought rather to read, "I will awake the dawn." David was to be so early astir at his devotions that, instead of the dawn awaking him, he would awake it: he would summon it to arise out of the east and help him to praise his Maker. But it is not Nature alone he would inspire with his enthusiasm: so full is he of joy in God that he wishes to communicate his emotions to all his fellow-creatures (ver. 9). How marelously has this wish been fulfilled! The Psalter has been translated into scores of languages, and wherever it has been known it has been loved. Finally he gives the reasons for praise (ver. 10), "For Thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and Thy truth unto the clouds." These will always be the reasons for praise that is truly hearty — to know the mercy that is as far above our sins as the dome of heaven is above the earth, and to know the faithfulness which, having begun a good work in us, will complete it unto the day of Christ. (J. Stalker, D. D.) 1. The cities of refuge were so scattered over the country that one of them could be easily reached from any part. "Kedesh" in the north, and "Hebron" in the south, while "Shechem" lay midway. "Bezer" was situated in the flat country, while "Ramoth" and "Golan" were on elevated ground. So our Refuge is easily reached by any one, it is "whosoever believeth in Him," and "him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out." It is the simple coming to Him and the taking Him at His word. 2. The gates of the cities of refuge were open day and night, that the man-slayer might enter at any time. And we, too, may go to our Refuge at any time. He is ever ready to hear our cry and to rescue us, and to save us; but let us not delay. 3. Any one might flee thither, the stranger as well as the Israelite. So it is with Christ: all may come to Him, of whatever nationality (Galatians 3:28). 4. When the man-slayer reached the city of refuge, he had to plead his cause to the elders of that city, and then, if necessary, before the congregation of the children of Israel; and it was only when his innocence of the crime of murder had been proved that he was allowed to take refuge there; otherwise he was delivered up to the avenger of blood to be slain. But in Christ the murderer may take refuge, and find pardon and peace; the worst of sinners have found refuge there. 5. Then we read that the man-slayer who had fled for refuge should stay in that city, for if he went out of the gate at any time the avenger of blood might slay him, and his blood would be upon his own head. He should have remained in the city whither he had fled. So with us; if we are not in Christ the Refuge, we are out at our own risk. (L. Shorey.) 4020 life, of faith A Song of Deliverance Fear and Faith January the Thirtieth Irresistible Artillery Now this Election the Apostle Demonstrating to Be... Motives to Holy Mourning The Providence of God Degrees of Sin A Few Sighs from Hell; The Great Shepherd Psalms |