2972. Forgiveness

No. 2972-52:49. A Sermon Delivered On Lord’s Day Evening, June 21, 1863, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

A Sermon Published On Thursday, January 25, 1906.

But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be feared. {Ps 130:4}

 For other sermons on this text:
   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2422, “There Is Forgiveness” 2423}
   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2792, “Psalmist’s Question and Answer, A” 2793}
   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2882, “Forgiveness and Fear” 2883}
   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2972, “Forgiveness” 2973}
   Exposition on Ps 129; 130; 131 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2422, “There Is Forgiveness” 2423 @@ "Exposition"}
   Exposition on Ps 130:1-8 1Jo 1:1-2:2 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3269, “Frail Leaf, A” 3271 @@ "Exposition"}
   Exposition on Ps 130; 1Jo 1:4-7 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3460, “Praise Comely to the Upright” 3462 @@ "Exposition"}
   Exposition on Ps 130 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2579, “Waiting, Hoping, Watching” 2580 @@ "Exposition"}
   Exposition on Ps 32; 130 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2882, “Forgiveness and Fear” 2883 @@ "Exposition"}

1. How significant is that word “but” in our text! It is as if you heard justice clamouring, “Let the sinner die,” and the fiends in hell howling, “Cast him down into the fires,” and conscience shrieking, “Let him perish,” and nature itself groaning beneath his weight, the earth weary with carrying him, the sun tired with shining on the traitor, the very air sick with finding breath for one who only spends it in disobedience to God. The man is about to be destroyed, to be swallowed up alive, when suddenly there comes this thrice blessed “but,” which stops the reckless course of ruin, puts its strong hand, bearing a golden shield, between the sinner and destruction, and pronounces these words, “But there is forgiveness with God, so that he may be feared.”

2. Suppose the question had been left open, — forgiveness or no forgiveness? We know that we have offended God; but suppose it had been left a moot point for us to find out, if possible, whether there was any forgiveness, where could we find it? We might turn to the works of God in nature, and say, “Well, he is good, who loads the trees with fruit, and tells the fields to yield so plentiful a harvest”; but when we remember how his lightnings sometimes strike the oak, and how his hurricanes swallow up whole navies in the deep, we shall be ready to say that he is terrible as well as tender; and we might be puzzled to know whether he would or would not forgive sin, all the more especially since we see all creatures die, and no exception made to that rule. If we knew that death was a punishment for sin, we should be led to fear that there was no forgiveness to be had from the hand of God; but when we turn to this open page, which God has so graciously written for our instruction, we are left in doubt no longer, for here we have it positively declared, “There is forgiveness with you, so that you may be feared,” This revelation is made exclusively in the Bible; but the words of my text are not exclusive. The passage is only one among a thousand echoes from the throne of God which proclaim his willingness to save sinners.

3. In attempting to bring this great doctrine of the possibility of pardon before the mind of the sinner tonight, I shall handle it in two or three ways. First, I shall try to prove it is so, so that he may be sure of the fact; I shall then try to attract him to accept this doctrine by dwelling on the pardon itself, hoping that the Spirit of God may work with my words; and before I am finished, I shall notice what will be the sure result of this pardon; whenever a man has been forgiven through the mercy of God, he is then enabled to fear the Lord, and to worship him in an acceptable manner.

4. I. By way of assurance, oh man! THERE IS FORGIVENESS FOR YOUR SINS, WHATEVER THEY MAY HAVE BEEN. However sinful your life may have been up until now, there is forgiveness with God even for you. God’s mere Word ought to be enough for you; but since the Spirit of God and your conscience have shown you something of your sins, and since you will to desponding and full of doubts, it will be good for me to give you something more than the mere Word of God to make you confident that there is forgiveness with him.

5. Please follow me back to the garden where your parents and mine first sinned. It was the greatest sin that was ever committed, with the exception of the murder of our Lord and Saviour, — the sin when Adam knowingly and wittingly rebelled against the one gentle command which his Master had given him as a test of his obedience. This was the mother-sin from which all other sins have sprung, the well from which the great river of iniquity, which drowned the world, first streamed. What did the Lord say when this sin was committed? Did he lift his angry hand, and strike the guilty pair at once? Did he visit our first parents with a curse that withered them, and sent them down to their eternal portion in the pit? He cursed, but it was the ground; he spoke in angry terms, but the serpent felt the weight of it. As for man, though God pronounced a sentence on him that we call a curse, but which has been transformed into a blessing, yet he gave that matchless promise which is the mother of all promises, “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.” In that one single promise that God himself would provide a Deliverer by whom the tempter should be destroyed, and all his craft should be foiled, I see written as clearly as with a sunbeam that God meant to have mercy on man. He would not talk about the seed of the woman bruising the serpent’s head if he had not intended something comforting for you and for me. The fact, I say, that though he did drive our first parents out of Eden, he did not drive them down to hell, — that though he did banish them from Paradise, he did not immediately consign them to the flames of his wrath, — that then and there he gave them a bright promise, which for many a hundred years was the only one that covered the thick darkness of the Fall, — that fact alone should make you hope that there is forgiveness with God.

6. But please, what is the meaning of those many altars with lambs and young bulls smoking on them, altars whose unhewn stones are dyed crimson with gore? Above all, what is the meaning of that priestly man, wearing that bejewelled breast-plate, who comes forward in obedience to God, and offers a lamb every morning and evening? Or what does it mean when, once in the year, he produces a scapegoat, which carries the sins of the people into the wilderness? What is the meaning of those rivers of blood and those mounds of ashes from the altar, if God does not forgive sin? There can be no meaning whatever in all the long and gorgeous pageantry of the Jewish religion unless it taught to every onlooker this great and solemn lesson, that though God is just, and blood must be shed, yet God is gracious, and accepts a substitute that the sinner may go free. By all those smoking altars, and the blood of rams, and lambs, and goats, and young bulls, believe, oh sinner, that God has found a ransom and a sacrifice, and that he, therefore, can and will pardon sin!

7. If you see these things dimly here, you will see them more clearly in another fact. Do you not know, oh man, that God has commanded you to repent? The times of former ignorance God winked at; but, now, he commands all men everywhere to repent. What for? Surely he would not command us to repent, and then intend to punish us afterwards. It could not be possible that God would woo sinners to return to him, and yet not intend to forgive them. I cannot believe a theory so monstrous as that God would send his ministers, and send his own Book, and earnestly and affectionately invite sinners to turn from their evil ways, and repent of their sins, and yet intend, even if they did repent, to punish them on account of their iniquity. It cannot be.

8. Do you not know, too, that God has commanded you to pray for forgiveness? What is the meaning of that prayer, “Forgive us our sins; for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us?” Would Christ put these words into your mouth if there were no pardon? Would he teach you to ask for forgiveness if forgiveness were an impossibility? Does God mock men? Does he teach beggars to beg when he intends to refuse? Does he bring you down on your knees so that he may see you mourn, and laugh at your despair? Does he intend to see you rolling in the dust, clothed with sackcloth and ashes, so that he may afterwards put his iron heel on your neck, and crush you to the lowest hell? It is not possible. The God, who commands you to repent, is just and merciful to forgive you your sins; and he who has invited you to seek his face has not said to the seed of Jacob, “Seek me in vain.”

9. Moreover, sinner, — and here we come to something even clearer, — do you not know that Jesus died? Have you not heard the wonderful story, how the Son of God came down from heaven, and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh? Do you not know that, after thirty-six years of holy life, by which he rendered perfect obedience to the divine law, and made it honourable, he took on himself the guilt, the crimes, the iniquities of a multitude that no man can number, for he bore the sins of many, and now he makes intercession for the transgressors? See there, if you can dare to look amid those moonlit olives, where on the ground, there kneels a man, indeed more, there kneels incarnate Deity; — what does it mean that his head, his hair, his garments are saturated with blood? Why is it that, on that ground, I see great clots of gore; — where do they come from? Did they come from his forehead? But what could have forced them from him? What does that sight mean? I watch that man dragged away, and charged most infamously with crimes he never knew, tied to a pillar, and there lashed with a Roman scourge, until the white bones stand out like islands of ivory amid a sea of coral, and his whole back has become a stream of blood, — what does it all mean? And that sight, where he is stretched on the transverse wood, where the nails have broached his hands and feet, and where his life goes oozing from him in extreme anguish and agony! What does that shriek mean, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” He is a just man; does God punish the just? He is God’s dear Son, and has done no evil; does God hate him, and punish him for nothing? Does he pour wrath on him for no reason? You know how it was. The sin of man was imputed to Christ; the iniquity of his people was laid on him. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” And here is the riddle unriddled; he dies so that we may live.

    He bore that we might never bear,
    His Father’s righteous ire.

Then, there must be forgiveness. I cannot see a bleeding Saviour without understanding that there must be pardon. Gethsemane, Gabbatha, Golgotha, three sacred words, three irresistible arguments by which it is proved beyond controversy that there is forgiveness even for the chief of sinners.

10. But if this does not satisfy you, oh troubled sinner, here is another fact for you to reflect on, — what multitudes have already been pardoned! Dare you look up there beyond the skies? Do you have strength enough of eyesight to see that multitude clothed in white, who, today, are standing before the throne of God? If there were no forgiveness, not one of them would have been there. Were their robes always white? Listen to their answer: — “We have washed our robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, therefore we are before the throne of God.” Forgiveness brought them there. Not one redeemed soul would ever have seen the everlasting glory unless it had been for the pardoning mercy of God.

    Round the altar priests confess
    If their robes are white as snow,
    ’Twas the Saviour’s righteousness,
    And his blood that made them so.
    Who were these? on earth they dwelt;
    Sinners once of Adam’s race;
    Guilt, and fear, and suffering felt;
    But were saved by sovereign grace.

11. Here are scores and hundreds of us who bear witness that God has pardoned us. Whatever I may doubt, I dare not doubt my pardon in Christ Jesus. There are moments when one has to examine well one’s evidences, and come to Jesus Christ again; but this one thing I know, that Christ says, “He who believes in me is not condemned”; and I do believe in him; if I have an existence, I know that I am trusting the Lord Jesus Christ; and if so, then I am pardoned. And oh, how sweet it is to know this! What peace it gives! I can look forward to living or to dying with equal delight now that I can say, “My sin is forgiven.” You can say, as I often do, in these sweet words of Kent, —

    Now freed from sin, I walk at large,
    My Saviour’s blood my full discharge;
    At his dear feet my soul I lay,
    A sinner saved, and homage pay.

Do you know what it is to be forgiven, young man? If you do not, you have not tasted the sweetest thing outside of heaven. Oh, it is such joy! Angels hardly have ever tasted a joy that exceeds the bliss of having sins put away. It yields a calm so deep, so profound, that it can only be called “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding.”

12. So I have tried to bring forward the great truth that there is forgiveness with God; and let me say, before I leave this point, that you will please remember that we have warrant in God’s Word for saying that there is forgiveness for you. However great your sins may have been, — with only one exception; there is the sin against the Holy Spirit, which, if you have any tenderness left in your conscience, you have not committed; — but, apart from that, “all kinds of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven to men,” I wish I could go around these galleries, and to these pews, and find out where the aching hearts were. Perhaps I should find one who said, “Oh sir, I never attended a place of worship for twenty or thirty years; can I be pardoned?” I would say, “Yes, there is forgiveness for you.” Another might say, “Why, I cursed God to his face; I have dared him to damn my soul; can I be forgiven?” I will answer, in the words of the text, “There is forgiveness.” And I might meet another who would say, “But I used to persecute my wife; I have treated my children badly because they would serve God. Can I, a hardened wretch such as I am, — can I be pardoned?” “There is forgiveness.” And I might meet another who would say, “Years ago, I was a high professor, but I became entangled in the world, and I have gone back. Am I not cast out?” And I would say, “There is forgiveness.” But there would be another who would say, “I cannot tell you what my crime is, unless you would stoop down, and let me whisper in your ear”; and when I heard the awful words, which I must not repeat, I would still say, before you all, “There is forgiveness.” And though it were murder or adultery, whatever it might have been, and however frequently it might have been committed, though the woman were a prostitute, and the man a practised thief, yet still we have the same gospel for every creature, “There is forgiveness.” And though you are eighty or ninety years of age, “There is forgiveness”; though you have sinned against light and knowledge, against mercy, against God and Christ his dear Son, yet still “there is forgiveness.” You have come to the brink of the precipice; — oh God, I see it! you are just going over, — one foot already rests on nothing, and you totter to your fall. Oh man, let me catch you in my arms, and tell you that “there is forgiveness” yet! One more step, and you may be where there is no forgiveness, but where the black and terrible pall of despair shall hang over your soul for ever, and it shall be said of you, “There are no acts of pardon passed in that cold grave to which he has gone; he is lost! lost! lost for ever!”

13. II. And now, secondly, I SHALL COMMEND THIS GRACIOUS FORGIVENESS TO YOU.

14. I commend it for its nature. It is a perfect pardon, — every sin is blotted out at once, — not a few sins, but every sin; though they are innumerable, they are all gone, they are all gone at once. And it is eternal pardon; they are all gone for ever; once forgiven, they will never be laid to your charge again; they are like the Egyptians in the Red Sea, the depths have covered them, there is not one of them left, — the pardon is complete in every respect. I heard one man say of his fellow, the other day, when the two had disagreed, and I had tried to make it right, “Yes, I forgive him, but — ” That is not how God puts it. He has no “buts” in his forgiveness. You sometimes say, “Yes, I forgive him, but I will never trust him again.” Not so the Lord; you make a clean breast in confession, and he will give you a clean breast by absolution. He will put all the sin you have committed so entirely away that they shall not be remembered against you any more for ever. And this pardon is instantaneous. You know that it takes only a moment to receipt a bill when the debt is paid; and Jesus Christ has paid the debt of every believer, and all that is to be done is for God to give you the receipt, to write in your heart the word “justified,” and this he does in a moment. When I think of the nature of this pardon, putting away all sin in a moment, and all the consequences of sin, I feel as if I wish that we had a choir of angels here, so that they might sing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men.”

15. Consider too, dear friends, not only the pardon itself, but the person to whom it is sent. Remember that it is sent to you. Not to the fallen angels; they were greater than you; but, when they fell, they fell without a hope of being restored to the favour of God. It is not sent to the damned in hell. Oh, what would they not give for it? How would they lean forward, — how would they catch every word! Though they have been there for only one moment, they know more of God’s wrath than you and I do; and oh, how they would prize the presentation of eternal life in Christ Jesus! It is not sent to them; but it is sent to you. You know what you have been; you know something about the hardness of your heart, and the sinfulness of your past life; yet God sends this message to you, “There is forgiveness.”

16. And I want you to remember who it is who sends the forgiveness. It is the God whom you have offended, that very God whom you may have cursed, whose Sabbath you have broken; whose Book you have despised, at whose ministers you have laughed, and whose servants you have persecuted; yet he says, even he, “There is forgiveness.” And lest you should doubt it, he takes a solemn oath before you all; and God never swears without the need for it, and so he swears, “ ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live,’ ” What more can we ask for than this? Admire and be attracted by the pardon when you think of who it is who sends it.

17. Consider, too, how it comes to you, and by what channel. It comes through the wounds of your best Friend, through the sufferings of him who gave his back to the strikers, and his cheeks to those who pulled out the hair. “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.” Oh sinner! will you not be only too glad to lay hold of what comes to you through so divine a channel which is marked with the heart’s blood of One who is the Friend of sinners even to death?

18. And, then, please remember that, if you do not receive this forgiveness which is preached to you, there is no other way under heaven by which you can be saved. Enter by this door, or stand shivering outside for ever; bow the knee, and kiss the Son, or else he will break you in pieces with his rod, as men break potters’ vessels. “Turn, turn from your evil ways; for why will you die, oh house of Israel?” But if you reject this pardon of God, you write your own death-warrants, and prepare the noose that is to be your souls’ destruction.

19. I wish that I had such powers of persuasion that I might induce you to lay hold of this precious pardon that God presents to you. I know that my pleadings are useless unless the Spirit of God shall be pleading too; but many, many times in this house, while I have been talking about the full, rich grace of God, some poor soul has felt that there was a message from God for it; and I trust, I hope it may be so tonight. Remember that, in the message of mercy, I am authorized to leave out no one; I am told to preach it to every creature under heaven, and I do. There are no terms but just these, — that you will take what God freely gives you. Just as, when men enlist for soldiers, the soldier does not give the sergeant anything, he takes the shilling. And the way in which your souls are saved is by taking what Christ freely offers to you, freely presents to you, the finished righteousness which he worked out in his life and death. You are to take, not to give. If there are terms, they are very simple; they are put so as to suit the dead in trespasses and sins. Christ comes to you just where you are. You have no power, no spiritual life, no goodness, no tenderness of heart; but Jesus, like the good Samaritan, comes just where you are, and he cries in your ear, “Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.” He tells me to say to you, though your hand is withered, “Stretch out your hand”; power shall go with the command, and you shall be made well.

20. I remember the time when, if anyone had tried to preach to me full and free forgiveness, to be had for nothing, and to be had on the spot, I do believe I should have leaped almost out of my body to have heard it. I have heard, sometimes, of Methodists and Welshmen standing up to dance, and I do not wonder why, if they really do get the full sense of this, that the big, black, foul villain of a sinner, the moment he trusts Jesus Christ, is forgiven, is a child of God, and is accepted. Why, it sounds too good to be true; and it could not be true if it only came from me, for I am only a man, and can only think and act as a man; but because it comes from the true God, and it is just like him, because it agrees with his attributes of lovingkindness and truth, therefore we know it is true. “I am God, and not man,” he says, and he gives that as a reason for his mercy. Why, if his love were not as much superior to ours as the heavens are above the earth, there never would be mercy presented in any form, much less in a form like this. There is nothing asked from you, only that you will just be nothing, and let Christ be everything, and take from Christ’s hand what he freely presents to you, — pardon through his precious blood.

21. III. Now, dear friends, I cannot put this truth more plainly than I have done, but I have the last part of the text just to comment a little on: “There is forgiveness with you, so that you may be feared.”

22. You see, the only men who ever do fear God are those who are forgiven. Other men may pretend to do it, but they fail to do it. Why, I believe that the religion of nine out of ten professing Christians is just this, “I go to church, or I go to chapel, regularly, and I think then I have done very well.” That is what most think, and the outside world believes that religion is this, “If a man is honest, and sober, and walks righteously, and so on, he goes to heaven.” But how startling must the sermon of this morning have been to some of these stuck-up Pharisees, when we told them it was not the righteous who would go there, but the sinner; {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 515 “The Sinner’s Advocate” 506} and that the apostle John did not say, “If any man has done good works, he has an Advocate”; but, “If any man sins, we have an Advocate with the Father.” As Martin Luther gloried to put it, “Jesus Christ never died for our good works, they were not worth his dying for; but he gave himself for our sins, according to the Scriptures.” What did our Saviour himself say, “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

23. The Lord never does have any who really and acceptably fear him except those who once were sinners, and who are led as sinners to accept his pardon; and these are the people who do fear him. Do you want to find a warm-hearted woman who really loves Jesus Christ, and who would break the alabaster box for his sake, you will find her in one who may be called “a woman who was a sinner,” Do you want to find a man who would preach Christ’s word with the tears running down his cheeks? You must go and find him among those who were once foul, of whom the apostles said, “Such were some of you, but you are washed.” When the Lord wanted a man to write the next best book in the world to the Bible, — “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” — he did not go to Lambeth Palace for him, and he did not go to any of the fine streets of this city to pick up some moral person. There was a swearing tinker playing at “tip-cat” {a} on Sunday on Elstow-green, and the Lord said, “That is the man.” He laid hold on him, washed his heart, made him a new man in Christ Jesus; and John Bunyan, the master-dreamer, has given us that remarkable book. And when the Lord wanted a man who would stir up London from end to end by preaching in St. Mary Woolnoth, where should he find him? Why, among the ragamuffins who were conducting the slave trade on the coast of Africa, among the sweepings and dregs of the universe. Almighty grace picked up John Newton, changed his heart, and made him one of the mightiest of teachers.

24. And when the Lord will bring out any who shall really fear him, and do anything great for his sake, it will be either from among those who have been outwardly great sinners, or else those who have been made in their conscience to feel the greatness of their guilt, and so have been prepared to deal with others. Oh, how many times I have blessed God for the five years of despair that I had to endure! No poor soul was ever more racked than I was, nor more hunted by the devil. For five years I was a victim to that black thought that God would never forgive me, and I bless his name for it. I never could have preached to the chief of sinners if it had not been for that experience. If I had come fresh from my mother’s apron-strings, without any deep sense of sin, and had found Christ as very many a young man does, readily and at once, I should never have liked to go down, and run my hands in the mire to get at the foul and the vile. But, now, I look back on those times of anguish, — why, there were days when I thought I was worse than the demons in hell; there were days when, if anyone had asked me about my character, though no one ever knew anything amiss about it, still I would have said, and felt it too, that there did not breathe God’s air a greater miscreant who more deserved to be in hell than I did. I wrote bitter things against myself, and if anyone had said, “Why, your life is moral,” I should have said, “Yes, but my heart is a reeking dunghill, full of everything that is foul,” and I felt it too, for though my lips never cursed God, yet my heart did, with blasphemy so foul that I shudder when I think of it. When I was given up as prey to the devil, and it seemed as if there was a pandemonium within my heart, then indeed I knew what it was to be severely broken in the place of darkness, and to be like a ship driven out to sea with the mast gone over the side, and every timber strained, and the hold filling with water, and nothing but Omnipotence keeping it from going down into the lowest depths. Ah! then I knew that I needed a great Christ for great sinners, and I dare not preach a little Christ now, and I dare not preach him to little sinners either. Oh, how great your sin has been, my hearers; but Jesus Christ is even greater! You have gone deeply into sin, but the arm of mercy can reach you. You have wandered far, but the eye of love can see you; and the voice of love calls to you now, “Come, come, come, and welcome, come and welcome.” Come just as you are, and you will not be cast away, but be accepted in the Beloved. “There is forgiveness with you, so that you may be feared,” and none fear, and love, and bless, and praise God so much as those who know that there is forgiveness with him.

{a} Tip-Cat: A game in which the wooden cat or tip-cat which is a short piece of wood tapering at both ends, is struck or “tipped” at one end with a stick so as to spring up, and then knocked to a distance by the same player. OED.

Exposition By C. H. Spurgeon {Ps 145}

When you get to the one hundred and forty-fifth Psalm, you enter the Beulah Land of the Psalms. Henceforth, the time of the singing of birds is come; and you go from one Hallelujah to another. In the Hebrew, this is one of the alphabetical Psalms, but one letter (nun) is omitted, perhaps, as Dr. Bonar suggests, that “we must be kept from putting stress on the mere form of the composition.” Those ancient singers sang their way through the alphabet from A to Z, and it is good for us also to begin to praise the Lord while we are still children, and to keep on praising him until we get to the “Z” in the very hour of death, gasping his praises until we get into eternity.

    My God, I’ll praise thee while I live,
       And praise thee when I die,
    And praise thee when I rise again,
       And to eternity.

1-3. I will extol you, my God, oh King; and I will bless your name for ever and ever. Every day I will bless you, and I will praise your name for ever and ever. Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.

Such as the Lord is, such should his worship be. If he were a little God, he would deserve little praise; but the great God is “greatly to be praised.” There is no fear of going to any excess in our praises; we must never laud him too highly, however lofty our expressions may be.

“Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.” David knew what it was to be himself searched by God and he prayed, “Search me, oh God”; but he could not search the greatness of his God. There, he was utterly lost; the utmost range of his faculties could not encompass the greatness of Jehovah: “his greatness is unsearchable.”

4. One generation shall praise your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.

There is a hallowed tradition of praise; each generation should hand on the praise of God as a precious legacy to the next one. Train up your sons and daughters to praise your God, so that, when your voice is silent in death, another voice, like your own, may continue the strain.

5. I will speak of the glorious honour of your majesty, and of your wondrous works.

“I will speak.” What a powerful speaker David was! Note how he piles up his golden words. He is not content merely to talk about God’s majesty, but he speaks of its “glorious honour.” When he talks about God’s works, he calls them “wondrous works.”

6. And men shall speak of the might of your terrible acts:

If they will not speak of anything else, they shall be obliged to speak with awe when the terrors of the Lord are abroad on the earth. If they were as dumb as fishes before, they shall begin to say to each other, with bated breath, when earthquakes, and famines, and war, and pestilence are rife, “What a terrible God he is!”

6. And I will declare your greatness.

While other men were talking, David did not say, “Now I can be quiet.” When they did not speak, he did; and when they began to speak, he still added his quota of praise to Jehovah.

7. They shall abundantly utter the memory of your great goodness, and shall sing of your righteousness.

What a beautiful expression! “They shall abundantly utter.” The original has in it the idea of bubbling up, boiling over, bursting out like a fountain; men’s hearts shall get to be so full of gratitude to God that they shall overflow with the memory of his great goodness. Then they shall sing. Singing is the language of jubilant nature: “the mountains and the hills shall break out before you into singing.” Singing is the language of men when they wish to express their highest joys. The saints sing the high praises of their God. Singing is the language of the holy angels; did they not, when they came to Bethlehem, sing concerning the new-born King? Singing is the language of heaven, and most marvellous of all, singing is the highest language that God ever uses: “He will rejoice over you with joy; he will rest in his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” Oh, for more holy singing!

8. The LORD is gracious, —

That alone is enough to make us sinners sing, for we need grace, and “the Lord is gracious,” —

8. And full of compassion; —

There is no “passion” in him, but there is “compassion” in him; what a mercy that is for us! He is “full of compassion”; —

8. Slow to anger, and of great mercy.

Hear that, you great sinners, and you saints who need great forbearance.

9. The LORD is good to all:

Even to his enemies. Does not the dewdrop hang on the thistle as well as on the rose?

9. And his tender mercies are over all his works.

He cares for the worm in the sod and for the fish in the sea as well as for men on the face of the earth.

10. All your works shall praise you, oh LORD; and your saints shall bless you.

Their voices can reach a higher note and a loftier strain than God’s works can ever reach: “your saints shall bless you.”

11. They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom,

For the saints love God as their King, and they rejoice to remember that the King’s Son said to his disciples, “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom”; so well may they sing about it.

11-13. And talk about your power; to make known to the sons of men his mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of his kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations.

What is the use of preaching if it does not glorify God? What is the use of a tongue that does not speak or sing of the glory of God’s kingdom? But let one of God’s bards have this as the theme of his song, and he feels like a hind let loose, rejoicing in glorious liberty.

14. The LORD holds up all who fall, and raises up all those who are bowed down.

Does this not seem to be an exceptional change in the strain? The Lord is a King, and his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom; yet what is he doing? Why, he is holding up, propping up those who are ready to fall, and lifting up those who are crushed and oppressed. Earthly kings often revel in the terror of their power, and the splendour of their majesty; what a condescending God is ours, whose glory is a moral glory, and whose chief delight consists in blessing the poor and needy! Let us bless his name for this. Are any of you ready to fall? Then praise him for this glorious truth, “The Lord holds up all who fall.” Are any of you bowed down? Daughter of Abraham, have you been bowed down these many years? Oh, that you might be made straight this very hour! And you may be, for God can lift you up, for he “raises up all those who are bowed down.”

15,16. The eyes of all wait on you; and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, and satisfy the desire of every living thing.

What a glorious God we have! How easily he can supply the needs of his people! He only has to open his hand, and it is done! We need not be afraid to come to him, as though our needs would be too great for him to supply. The commissariat {b} of the universe is superintended by this truly Universal Provider, who only has to open his hand to satisfy “the desire of every living thing.”

17. The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works.

This is a thing for which many modern divines do not praise God. The attribute of righteousness in the character of God is expelled from a good deal of modern theology. But he, who loves God properly, loves the righteousness of God. I would not care to have even salvation if it were unrighteous salvation. The righteousness of God gleams like a sharp two-edged sword, and it is terrible to those who are at enmity against him; but the true children of the Most High delight to see this sword of state carried ahead of the great King of kings. The seraphim cried, to each other, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts.” The redeemed in glory sing, “Just and true are your ways, you King of saints”; but the captious {fault-finding} critics of the present day care nothing for these attributes of Jehovah.

18. The LORD is near to all those who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.

If you read this Psalm through carefully, you will notice the great number of “alls” with which the latter part of the Psalm is studded; and this is appropriate, for God is All-in-all, he is the One, the All, so let him have all praise from all.

19. He will fulfil the desire of those who fear him: he also will hear their cry, and will save them.

When you have respect for God’s will, God will have respect for your will. When you fear him you will have no one else to fear, and when you make his service your delight, he will make your needs his care.

20. The LORD preserves all those who love him: but he will destroy all the wicked.

As in a state of sanitary perfection, everything that breeds miasma and disease is banished, so it must be in God’s great universe, when he has completed his work; “he will destroy all the wicked.”

21. My mouth shall speak the praise of the LORD: and let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever.

{b} Commissariat: Any non-military department or organization for the supply of provisions. OED.