[2.] It is agreeable to the covenant, for the covenant is mutual : ' I will be your God, and you shall be my people.' All promises relate to a covenant. Now, in every covenant there is ratio dati et accepti — something required as well as something given, for it binds mutually ; therefore if we would have God give us grace, we must yield obedience. Precepts and promises go hand in hand ; and therefore they that would have promises performed, they must observe precepts, and mingle resolutions of duty with expectations of mercy. That is the covenant way of dealing with God ; there must be a sincere purpose and endea- vour to serve God. I am thy servant, therefore stablish thy word to me. Use. To press you to become God's servants. I might bring motives both from the time past, present, and to come. (1.) From the time past. You are obliged to be so. You are his creatures ; you have life, being, and all tilings from him. We cannot receive a small kind- ness from man but it doth produce respect ; I am your servant. Shall a kindness from God less effect us, who made us, and gives us life, breath, and all things ? We take no notice of what comes from an invisible hand. Here is the wonder, that the great God, who hath no need of us, so often provoked by us, that is of such excellent majesty, so far above us, should take notice of us. Therefore, if God made us, keeps us, and maintains us from day to day, and abaseth himself
VeR. 38.] SERMONS UrON PSALM CXIX. 407
to behold ns, to look after iis, this should enga<:je us. (2.) And then from what is present. The honour that is put upon j-ou ; it is a great advancement to be God's servant. The meanest offices about princes are accounted honourable. Jesus Christ himself as niediator he hath this title put upon him, * My righteous servant,' Isa. liii. 11 ; and the ^ angels they are your fellow-servants, Ps. ciii. 21 ; they are called ' min- isters of God,' Likewise for the present you have free access to God : God's servants may stand in his ]n-esence, and they have liberty to ask anything they need of. The Queen of Sheba said con- cerning Solomon in 1 Kings x. 8, ' Happy are these thy servants, which stand continually before thee and hear thy wisdom,' Much more may it be said concerning God's servants, blessed are those that stand in his presence, that have such free leave to hold communion with God ; to come, and have assurance of welcome whenever they come. (3.) And for the time to come. God's service will issue itself into everlast- ing blessedness ; God's servants have excellent wages : John xii. 26, ' If any man serve me, he shall be there where I am, and my Father will honour him.' Christ and his Father will study what honour they can put upon him. Therefore be God's servants that you may please him for the present, and comfortably wait for his everlasting blessing. Thus I have gone over the first thing, namely the request, ' Stablish thy word unto thy servant.'
Secondly, The motive and argument, ' Who is devoted to thy fear.' The word may be rendered either which, or luho, as relating either to thy word or thy servant.
1. Thy word ; for in the original Hebrew the posture of the verse is thus, 'Stablish to thy servant thy word, which is to the fearing of thee;' that is, given that thou mayest be feared, there being in the word of God the greatest arguments and inducements to fear and reverence and obey him. The word of God was appointed to this use, to plant the fear of God in our hearts, and to increase our reverence of God. Not that Ave may play the wanton with promises, and feed our lusts with them. I rather take our own translation as more accommodate, and it hath such a sense as that, Ps. cix. 4, ' But I give myself unto prayer.' In the original it is, ' But I prayer ; ' and ' Stablish thy word to thy servant, who is to thy fear.' Our translators add, to make the sense more full, 'addicted,' 'devoted to thy fear,' that is, that makes it his business, care, and desire to stand in the fear of God.
2. Now this is added as a true note and description of God's ser- vants, as being a main thing in religion : Ps. cxi. 10, ' The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,' the first in point of order, and it is the first thing when we begin to be wise, to think of God, to have awful thoughts of God ; it is a chief point of wisdom, the great thing that makes us wise to salvation. And it is added as an argument of prayer : Neh. i. 11, '0 Lord, let thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servants, who desire to fear thy name.' The more any is given to the fear of God, the more assurance they have of God's love, and readi- ness to hear them at the throne of grace. The point is this —