David's love to god.
Ps. lvii. 7 — 11. My heart is jixed, 0 God, my heart is Jlxed: I will sing and give praise. Awake up, my glory', awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early. I will praise thee, 0 Lord, among the people : I will sing unto thee among the nations. For thy mercy is great unto the hea- vens, and thy truth unto the clouds. Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens: let thy glory be above all the earth.
HERE we behold the bosom of a saint laid open, and the inmost recesses of his heart exposed to view. We cannot read the words without being more or less impressed with this thought, O that my soul were in such a state as his ! Indeed the Psalmist himself judged this record of his experience to be of more than ordinary importance to the Church: and therefore, at a subsequent period, he detached these words from the context in which they stand, and made them the commencement of a se- parate psalm "^ ; intimating thereby, that they were not only proper to be used on occasion of any great deliverance, like that which had just been vouchsafed to him in the wilderness of En-gedi, (where Saul had sought to destroy him'',) but that our frame of
mind
* Ps. cviii. '' 1 Sam. xxiv.
374.] David's love to god. 203
mind at all times should be such as was there ex- pressed.
Let us observe, I. The grounds of his love to God —
From the particular mercy which he had received, he was led to contemplate God's wonderful perfec- tions ; and particularly to admire,
1 . The extent of his mercy — [The temporal deliverance itself was a rich display of mercy, because it bespoke the watchful care of God over one, who, as a sinner, might rather have been an object of his displeasure. But David looked beyond the immediate occasion of his gratitude, and viewed the mercy of God towards his soul. David knew himself to be a sinner, and that, if God should enter into judg- ment with him, he must inevitably and eternally perish. Nor was he ignorant of the means wliich God had provided for the redemption of his soul. Not even Isaiah himself prophesied more fully, or more minutely, respecting the sufferings and glory of the Messiah, than David did. Hence, viewing himself as a redeemed sinner, bought with the blood of God's only dear Son, he could not but adore the boundless extent of God's mercy to- wards him : " Thy mercy is great unto the heavens."
This must be the foundation of love in us also. Our blessed Lord has told us, that " they who have much forgiven will love much; but those who have but little forgiven will love little*^." There is no one so ignorant or obdurate, but that he will ac- knowledge that God is merciful : but the hopes of the generality are founded, not so much on the extent of God's mercy, as on the smallness of the occasion which they have for the exercise of it : and hence they are never penetrated with any deep sense of it as exercised towards them. But a person duly sensible of the great- ness of his sins, will form a corresponding estimate of God's mercies ; which will appear to him, " as the heavens, great" and without limit ; insomuch, that he will be able to find no terms whereby to express his views of them more justly than those of David in another psalm ; " As the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his mercy to them that fear him*^."
Let this be borne in mind, that all our love to God must have its origin in a knowledge of ourselves : since it is only from a view of our own extreme guilt and helplessness that we can ap- preciate in any degree the patience and forbearance, the mercy and loving-kindness, which, from our earliest infancy to this pre- sent hour, he has exercised towards us ]