knowledge is best when it exercises itself upon the name of
God. This most excellent knowledge leads to the most excellent grace
of faith. O, to learn more of the attributes and character of God.
Unbelief, that hooting nightbird, cannot live in the light of divine
knowledge, it flies before the sun of God's great and gracious name.
If we read this verse literally, there is, no doubt, a glorious
fulness of assurance in the names of God. We have recounted them in
the "Hints for Preachers," and would direct the reader's attention to
them. By knowing his name is also meant an experimental acquaintance
with the attributes of God, which are every one of them anchors to
hold the soul from drifting in seasons of peril. The Lord may hide
his face for a season from his people, but he never has utterly,
finally, really, or angrily forsaken them that seek him. Let
the poor seekers draw comfort from this fact, and let the finders
rejoice yet more exceedingly, for what must be the Lord's
faithfulness to those who find if he is so gracious to those who
seek.
"O hope of every contrite heart,
O joy of all the meek,
To those who fall how kind thou art,
How good to those who seek.
"But what to those who find, ah, this
Nor tongue nor pen can show
The love of Jesus what it is,
None but his loved ones know."
Verse 11. Being full of gratitude himself, our inspired author is
eager to excite others to join the strain, and praise God in the same
manner as he himself vowed to do in the first and second verses. The
heavenly spirit of praise is gloriously contagious, and he that hath
it is never content unless he can excite all who surround him to
unite in his sweet employ. Singing and preaching, as means of
glorifying God, are here joined together, and it is remarkable that,
connected with all revivals of gospel ministry, there has been a
sudden outburst of the spirit of song. Luther's Psalms and Hymns were
in all men's mouths, and in the modern revival under Wesley and
Whitefield, the strains of Charles Wesley, Cennick, Berridge,
Toplady, Hart, Newton, and many others, were the outgrowth of
restored piety. The singing of the birds of praise fitly accompanies
the return of the gracious spring of divine visitation through the
proclamation of the truth. Sing on brethren, and preach on, and these
shall both be a token that the Lord still dwelleth in Zion. It will
be well for us when coming up to Zion, to remember that the Lord
dwells among his saints, and is to be had in peculiar reverence of
all those that are about him.
Verse 12. When an inquest is held concerning the blood of the
oppressed, the martyred saints will have the first remembrance; he
will avenge his own elect. Those saints who are living shall also be
heard; they shall be exonerated from blame, and kept from
destruction, even when the Lord's most terrible work is going on; the
man with the inkhorn by his side shall mark them all for safety,
before the slaughtermen are permitted to smite the Lord's enemies.
The humble cry of the poorest saints shall neither be drowned by the
voice of the thundering justice nor by the shrieks of the
condemned.
Verse 13. Memories of the past and confidences concerning the future
conducted the man of God to the mercy seat to plead for the needs of
the present. Between praising and praying he divided all his time.
How could he have spent it more profitably? His first prayer is one
suitable for all persons and occasions, it breathes a humble spirit,
indicates self-knowledge, appeals to the proper attributes, and to
the fitting person. Have mercy upon me, O Lord. Just as Luther
used to call some texts little bibles, so we may call this sentence a
little prayer-book; for it has in it the soul and marrow of prayer.
It is multum in parvo, and like the angelic sword turns every way.
The ladder looks to be short, but it reaches from earth to
heaven.
What a noble title is here given to the
Most High. Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death!
What a glorious lift! In sickness, in sin, in despair, in temptation,
we have been brought very low, and the gloomy portal has seemed as if
it would open to imprison us, but, underneath us were the everlasting
arms, and, therefore, we have been uplifted even to the gates of
heaven. Trapp quaintly says, "He commonly reserveth his hand for a
dead lift, and rescueth those who were even talking of their
graves."
Verse 14. We must not overlook David's object in desiring mercy, it
is God's glory: "that I may show forth all thy praise." Saints
are not so selfish as to look only to self; they desire mercy's
diamond that they may let others see it flash and sparkle, and may
admire Him who gives such priceless gems to his beloved. The contrast
between the gates of death and the gates of the New Jerusalem is very
striking; let our songs be excited to the highest and most rapturous
pitch by the double consideration of whence we are taken, and to what
we have been advanced, and let our prayers for mercy be made more
energetic and agonizing by a sense of the grace which such a
salvation implies. When David speaks of his showing forth all
God's praise, he means that, in his deliverance grace in all its
heights and depths would be magnified. Just as our hymn puts it:—
"O the length and breadth of love!
Jesus, Saviour, can it be?
All thy mercy's height I prove,
All the depth is seen in me.
Here ends the first part of this instructive Psalm, and in pausing
awhile we feel bound to confess that our exposition has only flitted
over its surface and has not digged into the depths. The verses are
singularly full of teaching, and if the Holy Spirit shall bless the
reader, he may go over this Psalm, as the writer has done scores of
times, and see on each occasion fresh beauties.
Verse 15. In considering this terrible picture of the Lord's
overwhelming judgments of his enemies, we are called upon to ponder
and meditate upon it with deep seriousness by the two untranslated
words, Higgaion, Selah. Meditate, pause. Consider, and tune your
instrument. Bethink yourselves and solemnly adjust your hearts to the
solemnity which is so well becoming the subject. Let us in a humble
spirit approach these verses, and notice, first, that the character
of God requires the punishment of sin.
Verse 16. Jehovah is known by the judgment which he executeth;
his holiness and abhorrence of sin is thus displayed. A ruler who
winked at evil would soon be known by all his subjects to be evil
himself, and he, on the other hand, who is severely just in judgment
reveals his own nature thereby. So long as our God is God, he will
not, he cannot spare the guilty; except through that one glorious way
in which he is just, and yet the justifier of him that believeth in
Jesus. We must notice, secondly, that the manner of his judgment is
singularly wise, and indisputably just. He makes the wicked become
their own executioners. "The heathen are sunk down in the pit that
they made," etc. Like cunning hunters they prepared a pitfall for the
godly and fell into it themselves: the foot of the victim escaped
their crafty snares, but the toils surrounded themselves: the cruel
snare was laboriously manufactured, and it proved its efficacy by
snaring its own maker. Persecutors and oppressors are often ruined by
their own malicious projects. "Drunkards kill themselves; prodigals
beggar themselves;" the contentious are involved in ruinous costs;
the vicious are devoured with fierce diseases; the envious eat their
own hearts; and blasphemers curse their own souls. Thus, men may read
their sin in their punishment. They sowed the seed of sin, and the
ripe fruit of damnation is the natural result.
Verse 17. The justice which has punished the wicked, and preserved
the righteous, remains the same, and therefore in days to come,
retribution will surely be meted out. How solemn is the seventeenth
verse, especially in its warning to forgetters of God. The moral who
are not devout, the honest who are not prayerful, the benevolent who
are not believing, the amiable who are not converted, these must all
have their own portion with the openly wicked in the hell which is
prepared for the devil and his angels. There are whole nations of
such; the forgetters of God are far more numerous than the profane or
profligate, and according to the very forceful expression of the
Hebrew, the nethermost hell will be the place into which all of them
shall be hurled headlong. Forgetfulness seems a small sin, but it
brings eternal wrath upon the man who lives and dies in it.
Verse 18. Mercy is as ready to her work as ever justice can be. Needy
souls fear that they are forgotten; well, if it be so, let them
rejoice that they shall not alway be so. Satan tells poor
tremblers that their hope shall perish, but they have here the divine
assurance that their expectation shall not perish for ever.
"The Lord's people are a humbled people, afflicted, emptied, sensible
of need, driven to a daily attendance on God, daily begging of him,
and living upon the hope of what is promised;" such persons may have
to wait, but they shall find that they do not wait in vain.
Verse 19. Prayers are the believer's weapons of war. When the battle
is too hard for us, we call in our great ally, who, as it were, lies
in ambush until faith gives the signal by crying out, "Arise, O
Lord." Although our cause be all but lost, it shall be soon won
again, if the Almighty doth but bestir himself. He will not suffer
man to prevail over God, but with swift judgments will confound their
gloryings. In the very sight of God the wicked will be punished, and
he who is now all tenderness will have no bowels of compassion for
them, since they had no tears of repentance while their day of grace
endured.
Verse 20. One would think that men would not grow so vain as to deny
themselves to be but men, but it appears to be a lesson which only a
divine schoolmaster can teach to some proud spirits. Crowns leave
their wearers but men, degrees of eminent learning make their
owners not more than men, valour and conquest cannot elevate
beyond the dead level of "but men;" and all the wealth of
Croesus, the wisdom of Solon, the power of Alexander, the eloquence
of Demosthenes, if added together, would leave the possessor but a
man. May we ever remember this lest like those in the text, we should
be put in fear.
Before leaving this Psalm, it will be
very profitable if the student will peruse it again as the triumphal
hymn of the Redeemer, as he devoutly brings the glory of his
victories and lays it down at his Father's feet. Let us joy in his
joy, and our joy shall be full.
EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
Whole Psalm. We are to consider this song of praise, as I
conceive, to be the language of our great Advocate and Mediator, "in
the midst of the church giving thanks unto God," and teaching us to
anticipate by faith his great and final victory over all the
adversaries of our peace temporal and spiritual, with especial