David's love to god.
Ps. Ivii. 7 — 11. My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed : I will sing and give j^/'fiise. Awake up, my glory ; awake, psaltery and harp : I myself will awake early. I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people : I loill sing unto thee among the nations. For thy mercy is great unto tl^e heavens, and thy truth tmto the clouds. Be thou exalted, 0 God, above the heavens : let thy glory he 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 separate 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 at all times should be such as was there expressed.
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 v^^atchful care of God over one, who, as a sinner, might rather have been an object of his dis- pleasure. 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 judgment with him, he must inevitably and eternally perish. Nor was he ignorant of the means which
^ Ps. cviii. ^ 1 Sam. xxiv.