3388. Soul Threshing

A Sermon Published On Thursday, January 8, 1914.

For the black cummin are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned over on the cummin, but the black cummin are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. Bread grain is ground; because he will not always be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor crush it with his horsemen. {Isa 28:27,28}

1. The art of husbandry was taught to man by God. He would have starved while he was discovering it, and so the Lord, when he sent him out of the Garden of Eden, gave him a measure of elementary instruction in agriculture, even as the prophet puts it, “His God instructs him to discretion and teaches him.” God has taught man to plough, to break the clods, to sow the different kinds of grain, and to thresh out the different kinds of seeds.

2. The Eastern farmer could not thresh by machinery as we do; but he was still ingenious and discreet in that operation. Sometimes a heavy instrument was dragged over the grain to tear out the grain. This is what is intended in the first clause by the “threshing instrument,” as also in that passage, “I have made you a sharp threshing instrument having teeth.” When the grain drag was not used, they often turned the heavy solid wheel of a country cart over the straw. This is alluded to in the next sentence: — “Neither is a cart wheel turned over on the cummin.” They also had flails not very unlike our own, and then for even smaller seeds, such as dill and cummin, they used a simple staff or a slender switch. “The black cummin are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.”

3. This is not the time or place to give a dissertation on threshing. We find every information on that subject in proper books; but the meaning of the illustration is this — that just as God has taught farmers to distinguish between different kinds of grain in the threshing, so he, in his infinite wisdom, deals discreetly with different kinds of men. He does not try us all in the same way, since we are differently constituted. He does not pass us all through the same agony of conviction, we are not all to the same extent threshed with terrors. He does not make us all to endure the same family or bodily affliction; one escapes with only being beaten with a rod, while another feels, as it were, the feet of horses in his heavy tribulations.

4. Our subject is just this. Threshing: all kinds of seeds need it, all kinds of men need it. Secondly, the threshing is done with discretion; and thirdly, the threshing will not last for ever; for so the second verse of the text says, “Bread grain is ground; because he will not always be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor crush it with his horsemen.”

5. I. First, then: — WE ALL NEED THRESHING.

6. Some have a foolish conceit of themselves that they have no sin; but they deceive themselves, and the truth is not in them. The best of men are men at the best; and being men, they are not perfect but are still weighed down with infirmity. What is the object of threshing the grain? Is it not to separate it from the straw and the chaff?

7. In the best of men there is still a measure of chaff. All is not grain that lies on the threshing-floor. All is not grain even in those golden sheaves which have been brought into our garner so joyfully. Even the wheat is joined to the straw, which was necessary for it at one time. The husk is wrapped around the kernel of the wheat, and this still clings to it, even when it lies on the threshing-floor. In the holiest of men there is something superfluous, something which must be removed. We either sin by omission or by trespass. Either in spirit, or motive, or lack of zeal, or lack of discretion, we are faulty. If we escape one error, we usually glide into its opposite. If before an action we are right, we err in the doing of it, or, if not, we become proud after it is over. If sin is shut out at the front door, it tries the backdoor, or climbs in at the window, or comes down the chimney. Those who cannot perceive it in themselves are frequently blinded by its smoke. They are so thoroughly in the water that they do not know that it rains. So far as my own observation goes, I have found no man whom the old divines would have called perfectly perfect; the absolutely all-round man is a being whom I expect to see in heaven, but not in this poor fallen world. We all need such cleansing and purging as the threshing-floor is intended to work for us.

8. Now, threshing is useful in loosening the connection between the good grain and the husk. Of course, if it would slip out easily from its husk, the grain would only need to be shaken. There would be no necessity for a staff or a rod, much less for the feet of horses, or the wheel of a cart to separate it. But there is the rub: our soul not only lies in the dust, but “cleaves” to it. There is a fearful intimacy between fallen human nature and the evil which is in the world; and this league is not soon broken. In our hearts we hate every false way, and yet we sorrowfully confess, “When I would do good, evil is present with me.” Sometimes when our spirit cries out most ardently after God, a holy will is present with us, but how to perform what is good we do not find. Flesh and blood have tendencies and weaknesses which, if not sinful in themselves, yet tend in that direction. Appetites need very slight excitement to germinate into lusts. It is not easy for us to forget our own kindred and our father’s house, even when the King most greatly desires our beauty. Our alien nature remembers Egypt and the flesh pots while the manna is still in our mouths. We were all born in the house of evil, and some of us were nursed on the lap of iniquity, so that our first companionships were among the heirs of wrath. What was bred in the bone is hard to get out of the flesh. Threshing is used to loosen our hold of earthly things and break us away from evil. This needs a divine hand, and nothing but the grace of God can make the threshing effective. Something is done by threshing when the soul ceases to be bound up with its sin, and sin is no longer pleasurable or satisfactory. Still, just as the work of threshing is never done until the grain is separated together from the husk, so chastening and discipline have never accomplished their purpose until God’s people give up every form of evil, and abhor all iniquity. When we shake right out of the straw, and have nothing further to do with sin, then the flail will lie quiet. It has taken a good deal of threshing to bring some of us anywhere near that mark, and I am afraid many more heavy blows will be struck before we shall reach the total separation. From a certain kind of sins we are very easily separated by the grace of God early in our spiritual life; but when those are gone, another layer of evils comes into sight, and the work has to be repeated. The complete removal of our connection with sin is a work demanding the divine skill and power of the Holy Spirit, and it will only be accomplished by him.

9. Threshing becomes necessary for the sake of our usefulness; for the wheat must come out of the husk to be of use. We can only honour God and bless men by being holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. Oh grain of the Lord’s threshing-floor, you must be beaten and ground, or perish as a worthless heap! Eminent usefulness usually necessitates eminent affliction.

10. Unless severed from sin like this, we cannot be gathered into the garner. God’s pure wheat must not be defiled by a mixture of chaff. There shall by no means enter into heaven anything that defiles; therefore, every kind of imperfection must come away from us by some means or other, before we can enter into the state of eternal blessedness and perfection. Yes, even here we cannot have true fellowship with the Father unless we are daily delivered from sin.

11. Perhaps, some of us today are lying on the threshing-floor, suffering from the blows of chastisement. What then? Why, let us rejoice in it; for this testifies to our value in the sight of God. If the wheat were to cry out and say, “The great drag has gone over me, therefore the farmer has no care for me,” we should instantly reply, “The farmer does not pass the grain drag over the darnel or the nettles; it is only over the precious wheat that he turns the wheel of his cart, or the feet of his oxen. Because he values the wheat, therefore he deals sternly with it and does not spare it.” Do not judge, oh believer, that God hates you because he afflicts you; but interpret truly, and see that he honours you by every stroke which he lays on you. Thus says the Lord, “You only have I known of all the nations of the earth; therefore, I will punish you for all your iniquities.” Because a full atonement has been made by the Lord Jesus for all his people’s sins; therefore, he will not punish us as a judge; but because we are his dear children, therefore he will chastise us as a father. In love he corrects his own children so that he may perfect them into his own image, and make them partakers of his holiness. Is it not written, “I will bring them under the rod of the covenant”? Has he not said, “I have refined you, but not with silver, I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction”? Therefore, do not judge according to the sight of the eyes or the feeling of the flesh, but judge according to faith, and understand that, just as threshing is a testimony to the value of the wheat, so affliction is a sign of God’s delight in his people.

12. Remember, however, that just as threshing is a sign of the impurity of the wheat, so is affliction an indication of the present imperfection of the Christian. If you were no more connected with evil, you would be no more corrected with sorrow. The sound of a flail is never heard in heaven, for it is not the threshing-floor of the imperfect, but the garner of the completely sanctified. The threshing instrument is, therefore, a humbling sign, and as long as we feel it we should humble ourselves under the hand of God, for it is clear that we are not yet free from the straw and the chaff of fallen nature.

13. On the other hand, the threshing instrument is a prophecy of our future perfection. We are undergoing from the hand of God a discipline which will not fail: we shall by his prudence and wisdom be completely delivered from the husk of sin. We are feeling the blows of the staff, but we are being effectively separated from the evil which has surrounded us for so long, and for certain we shall one day be pure and perfect. Every tendency to sin shall be beaten off. “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.” If we, being evil, yet succeed with our children by our poor, imperfect chastening, how much more shall the Father of spirits cause us to live for him by his holy discipline? If the grain could know the necessary uses of the flail, it would invite the thresher to do his work; and since we know what tribulation does for us, let us glory in it, and yield ourselves with cheerfulness to its processes. We need threshing, the threshing proves our value in God’s sight, and while it marks our imperfection, it secures our ultimate cleansing.

14. II. In the next place, I would remark that: — GOD’S THRESHING IS DONE WITH GREAT DISCRETION; “for the black cummin is not threshed with a threshing instrument.”

15. The poor little black cummin, a kind of small seed used for flavouring cakes, were not crushed out with a heavy drag, for by such rough usage they would have been broken up and spoiled. “Neither is a cart wheel turned over on the cummin”; this little seed, perhaps the caraway, would have been ground by so great a weight: it would have been preposterous to treat it in that rough manner. The black cummin were soon removed from the stalks by being “beaten out with a staff,” and the cummin needed nothing but a touch of a rod. For tender seeds the farmer uses gentle means, and for the hardier grains he reserves the sterner processes. Let us think of this, as it conveys a valuable spiritual lesson.

16. Reflect, my brother, that your threshing and mine are in God’s hands. Our chastening is not left to servants, much less to enemies; “we are chastened by the Lord!” The Great Farmer himself personally tells the labourers to do this and that, for they do not know the time or the way, except as divine wisdom shall direct: they would turn the wheel over the cummin, or attempt to thresh wheat with a staff. I have seen God’s servants trying both these follies; they have crushed the weak and tender, and they have dealt with partiality and softness with those who needed to be sternly rebuked. How roughly some ministers, some elders, some good men and women will go to work with timid, tender souls; yet we need not fear that they will destroy the true-hearted, for, however much they may vex them, the Lord will not leave his chosen in their hands, but will overrule their mistaken severity, and preserve his own from being destroyed by it. How glad I am for this; for there are many nowadays who would grind the tender ones to powder if they could!

17. Just as the Lord has not left us in the power of man, so also he has not left us in the power of the devil. Satan may sift us as wheat, but he shall not thresh us as black cummin. He may blow away the chaff from us even with his foul breath, but he shall not have the management of the Lord’s grain: “the Lord preserves the righteous.” Not a stroke in providence is left to chance; the Lord ordains it, and arranges the time, the force, and the place of it. The divine decree leaves nothing uncertain; the jurisdiction of supreme love occupies itself with the smallest events of our daily lives. Whether we bear the teeth of the grain drag, or men ride over our heads, or we endure the gentler touches of the divine hand, everything is by appointment, and the appointment is fixed by infallible wisdom. Let this be a mine of comfort to the afflicted.

18. Next, note that the instruments used for our threshing are chosen also by the Great Farmer. The Eastern farmer, according to the text, has several instruments, and so has our God. No form of threshing is pleasant to the seed which endures it; indeed, each one seems to the sufferer to be particularly objectionable. We say, “I think I could bear anything but this sad trouble.” We cry, “It was not an enemy, then I could have borne it,” and so on. Perhaps the tender cummin foolishly imagines that the horses hoofs would be a less terrible ordeal than the rod, and the black cummin might even prefer the wheel to the staff; but happily the matter is left to the choice of One who judges unerringly. What do you know about it, poor sufferer? How can you judge what is good for you? “Ah!” cries a mother, “I would not mind poverty; but to lose my darling child is too terrible!” Another laments, “I could have parted with all my wealth, but to be slandered cuts me to the quick.” There is no pleasing us in the matter of chastisement. When I was at school, with my uncle for a teacher, it often happened that he would send me out to find a cane for him. It was not a very pleasant task, and I noticed that I never once succeeded in selecting a stick which was liked by the boy who had to feel it. Either it was too thin, or too stout; and as a result I was threatened by the sufferers with a just punishment if I did not do better next time. I learned from that experience never to expect God’s children to like the particular rod with which they are chastened. You smile at my simile, but you may smile also at yourself when you find yourself crying, “Any trouble but this, Lord. Any affliction but this.” How idle it is to expect a pleasant trial; for it would then be no trial at all. Almost every really useful medicine is unpleasant: almost all effective surgery is painful: no trial for the present seems to be joyful, but grievous, yet it is the right trial, and none the less right because it is bitter.

19. Notice, too, that God not only selects the instruments, but he chooses the place. Farmers in the East have large threshing-floors, on which they throw the sheaves of grain or barley, and on these they turn horses and drags; but near the house-door I have often noticed in Italy a much smaller circle of hardened clay or cement, and here I have seen the peasants beating out their garden seeds in a more careful way than would naturally be used towards the greater heaps on the larger area. Some saints are not afflicted in the common affairs of life, but they have particular sorrow in their innermost spirits: they are beaten on the smaller and more private threshing-floor but the process is none the less effective. How foolish are we when we rebel against our Lord’s appointment, and speak as if we had a right to choose our own afflictions! “Should it be according to your mind?” Should a child select the rod? Should the grain appoint its own thresher? Are not these things to be left to a higher wisdom? Some complain of the time of their trial; it is hard to be crippled in youth, or to be poor in age, or to be widowed when your children are young. Yet in all this there is wisdom. A part of the skill of the physician may lie not only in writing a prescription, but in appointing the hours at which the medicine shall be taken. One medicine may be most useful in the morning, and another may be more beneficial in the evening; and so the Lord knows when it is best for us to drink from the cup which he has prepared for us. I know a dear child of God who is enduring a severe trial in his old age, and I would gladly screen him from it because of his feebleness, but our heavenly Father knows best, and there we must leave it. The instrument of the threshing, the place, the measure, the time, the end, are all appointed by infallible love.

20. It is interesting to notice in the text the limit of this threshing. The farmer is zealous to beat out the seed, but he is careful not to break it in pieces by too severe a process. His wheel is not to grind, but to thresh; the horses’ feet are not to break, but to separate. He intends to get the cummin out of its husk, but he will not turn a heavy drag on it utterly to pulverize it and destroy it. In the same way the Lord has a measure in all his chastening. Courage, tried friend, you shall be afflicted as you need, but not as you deserve: tribulation shall come as you are able to bear it. As is the strength such shall the affliction be: the wheat may feel the wheel, but the black cummin shall bear nothing heavier than a staff. No saint shall be tempted beyond the proper measure, and the limit is fixed by a tenderness which never deals a needless stroke.

21. It is very easy to talk like this in cool blood, and quite another thing to remember it when the flail is hammering you; yet I have personally experienced this truth on the bed of pain, and in the furnace of mental distress. I thank God for every memory of my afflictions; I did not doubt his wisdom, then, nor have I had any reason to question it since. Our Great Farmer understands how to separate us from the husk, and he goes about his work in a way for which he deserves to be adored for ever.

22. It is a pleasant thought that God’s limit is one beyond which trials never go: — 

   If trials six be fix’d for men

      They shall not suffer seven.

   If God appoint afflictions ten,

      They ne’er can be eleven.

23. The old law ordained forty stripes except one, and in all our scourgings there always comes in that “except one.” When the Lord multiplies our sorrows up to a hundred, it is because ninety-nine failed to accomplish his purpose; but all the powers of earth and hell cannot give us one blow more than the settled number. We shall never endure a superfluity of threshing. The Lord never sports with the feelings of his saints. “He does not afflict willingly,” and so we may be sure he never gives an unnecessary blow.

24. The wisdom of the farmer in limiting his threshing is far exceeded in the wisdom of God by which he sets a limit to our griefs. Some escape with little trouble, and perhaps it is because they are frail and sensitive. The little garden seeds must not be beaten too heavily lest they be injured; those saints who have a delicate body must not be roughly handled, nor shall they be. Possibly they have a feeble mind also, and what others would laugh at would be death to them; they shall be kept as the apple of the eye.

25. If you are free from tribulation, never ask for it; that would be a great folly. I met a brother a little while ago who said that he was much perplexed because he had no trouble. I said, “Do not worry about that; but be happy while you may.” Only a strange child would beg to be flogged. Certain sweet and shining saints are of such a gentle spirit that the Lord does not expose them to the same treatment as he metes out to others: they do not need it, and they could not bear it; why should they wish for it?

26. Others, again, are very heavily pressed; but what of that, if they are a superior grain, a seed of larger usefulness, intended for higher purposes? Do not let them regret that they have to endure a heavier threshing since their use is greater. It is the bread grain that must go under the feet of the horseman and must feel the wheel of the cart; and so the most useful have to pass through the sternest processes. Everyone among us would say, “I could wish that I were Martin Luther, or that I could play as noble a part as he did.” Yes; but, in addition to the outward perils of his life, the inward experiences of that remarkable man were such as none of us would wish to feel. He was frequently tormented with Satanic temptations, and driven to the verge of despair. At one hour he rode the whirlwind and the storm, master of all the world, and then after days of fighting with the pope and the devil, he would go home to his bed and lie there broken down and trembling. You see God’s heroes only in the pulpit, or in other public places, you do not know what they are before God in secret. You do not know their inner life: otherwise you might discover that the bread grain is ground, and that those who are most useful in comforting others have to endure frequent sorrow themselves. Envy no man; for you do not know how he may have to be threshed to make him right and keep him so.

27. Brethren, we see that our God uses discretion in the chastisement of his people; let us use a loving prudence when we have to deal with others in that way. Be gentle as well as firm with your children; and if you have to rebuke your brother, do it very tenderly. Do not drive your horses over the tender seed. Remember that the cummin is beaten out with a staff, and not crushed out with a wheel. Take a very light rod. Perhaps it would be as good if you had no rod at all, but left that work to wiser hands. Go and sow and leave your elders to thresh.

28. Next, let us firmly believe in God’s discretion, and be sure that he is doing the right thing by us. Let us not be anxious to be screened from affliction. When we ask that the cup may pass from us, let it be with a “nevertheless not as I will.” Best of all, let us freely part with our chaff. The likeliest way to escape the flail is to separate from the husk as quickly as possible. “Come out from among them.” Separate yourselves from sin and sinners, from the world and worldliness, and the process of threshing will all the sooner be completed. May God make us wise in this matter!

29. III. A word or two is all we can afford on the third point, which is that: — THE THRESHING WILL NOT LAST FOR EVER.

30. The threshing will not last all our days even here: “Bread grain is ground, but he will not always be threshing it.” Oh! no. “For a small moment I have forsaken you, but with great mercies I will gather you.” “He will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger for ever.” “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” Rejoice, you daughters of sorrow! Be comforted, you sons of grief! Have hope in God, for you shall yet praise him who is the health of your countenance. The rain does not always fall, nor will the clouds always return. Sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Threshing is not an operation which the grain requires all the year round, for the most part the flail is idle. Bless the Lord, oh my soul! The Lord will yet bring home his banished ones.

31. Above all, tribulation will not last for ever, for we shall soon be gone to another and better world. We shall soon be carried to the land where there are neither threshing-floors nor grain drags. I sometimes think I hear the herald calling me. His trumpet sounds: “Up and away! Boot and saddle! Up and away! Leave the camp and the battle, and return in triumph.” The night is far spent with some of you, but the morning comes. The daylight breaks above those hills. The day is coming — the day that shall go down no more for ever. Come, eat your bread with joy, and march onward with a merry heart; for the land which flows with milk and honey is only a little way before you. Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away, endure the Great Farmer’s will, and may the Lord glorify himself in you. Amen.

Expositions By C. H. Spurgeon {Ps 90; 119:21-32}

Psalm 90

“The prayer of Moses, the man of God.”

I think this Psalm has been very much misunderstood, because the title has been forgotten. It is not a Psalm for us in its entirety: it cannot be read by the Christian man and taken as it stands. It is a Psalm of Moses, as far as Moses can get. It goes a long way, but there was a Joshua who lead the people into the promised land, and there is a Jesus who has “brought life and immortality to light by the gospel.” That light shines through the gloomy haze of this dark Psalm. Please remember that Moses was a man particularly tried. We have never duly given weight to the afflictions of Moses. All the people that he brought out of Egypt, with two exceptions, died, and he saw most of them die: he himself having the sentence of death in himself, that he, like the rest, must not cross into the Land of Promise; so that with two million or more of people all around him, that forty years he stood in the valley of the shadow of death, and with all the mercies that surrounded him; yet, still, he must have had continual sorrow of heart, all his old friends and companions passing away one by one. It is a brave Psalm, if you read it in that light: it is a grand example of heroic faith.

1. Lord, you have been our dwelling-place in all generations.

All your saints reside in you. Your fiery, cloudy pillar covers and protects us.

2. Before the mountains were created, even before you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

Oh! that is grand to feel that there is something stable: there is a rock that never crumbles — God from everlasting to everlasting the same. As for us, what are we?

3. You turn man to destruction, and say, “Return, you children of men.”

A breath gave them life: a word makes them die.

4-6. For a thousand years in your sight are only as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. You carry them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which grows up. In the morning it flourishes, and grows up; in the evening it is cut down and withers.

We have seen this over and over again, as we shall see it yet again this year in the flourishing and the cutting down of the grass; but we forget it for ourselves. Too often we forget it for our companions: we think that they are immortal when everyone is mortal. Let us correct our estimate that we may somewhat correct our sorrows.

7. For we are consumed by your anger, and by your wrath we are troubled.

Which was true of that generation. They died because of God’s anger; but we bless God: as many of us as have believed in Christ Jesus are not under the divine anger: it is taken away. When it does fall on us, it is as a father is angry with his children; it troubles and consumes us; but, blessed be God, we usually walk in the light of his countenance, and are glad, and rejoice in it. Let us value his mercy as we see the misery of his wrath.

8. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance.

That is true of you who do not know God. Your sins are always before his face, but it is not true of believers. You have cast all their sins behind your back. God has forgotten the sins of his chosen, according to his own promise, “Their sins and their iniquities I will remember no more for ever.” Oh blessed gospel, Moses cannot reach to that.

9. For all our days are passed away in your wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.

“For all our days are passed away in your wrath.” So it was with those who were all around Moses; but our days are passed in God’s goodness: they shall pass away in infinite love, “We spend our years as a tale that is told.”

10. The days of our years are three-score years and ten; and if by reason of strength they are fourscore years, yet their strength is labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Speaking of most men, this is all that can be said of them; but as for the godly, where do they fly? They fly into his bosom who has loved them with an everlasting love. What is death but an open cage to bid us to fly and build our happy nests on high? Blessed be God that we do fly away. Have we not often wished for it and said, “Oh that I had the wings of a dove that I might fly away and be at rest” — that will come eventually.

11. Who knows the power of your anger? Even according to your fear, so is your wrath.

Just as he is greatly to be reverenced, so he is to be greatly feared. But the Lord has said of his people, “Just as I have sworn that the waters of Noah shall no more cover the earth, so I have sworn that I would not be angry with you, nor rebuke you.” Blessed be his name.

12-14. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. Return, oh LORD, how long? and have compassion on your servants. Oh satisfy us early with your mercy; so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Poor Israel was greatly afflicted. These deaths in the wilderness made her a perpetual mourner; but Moses asks that God will return to his people, cheer and encourage them, and let the few days they have to live be bright with his presence.

15-17. Make us glad according to the days when you have afflicted us, and the years when we have seen evil. Let your work appear to your servants, and your glory to their children. And let the beauty of the LORD our God be on us: and establish the work of our hands on us; yes, establish the work of our hands.

Psalm 119

21. You have rebuked the proud who are cursed, who do err from your commandments.

Wherever there is pride in the heart, there is sure to be error in the life. A proud man is wrong to begin with, and as long as he continues to be proud, he must be wrong. It is not possible for him to be right. God has rebuked him, and God has cursed him. How wise it would be of him to be humble. Remember we shall have either to be humble or to be humbled; and it is much better to be humble than to have to come under the humbling actions of God’s hand.

22. Remove from me reproach and contempt: for I have kept your testimonies.

Oh Lord, do not allow men to believe lies and slanders against me; or if they do let my conscience sustain my courage by the consciousness that I have kept your testimonies.

23. Princes also sat and spoke against me:

Did they have nothing else to do, but talk against God’s servants? No; they sat down to do it with deliberation. “Princes also sat and spoke against me.”

23. But your servant.

“Go to law with them”? No; not so here. “But your servant got red in the face and defended himself”? No, no. Look, you will not read those words. But “Your servant was broken-hearted about it, to have the great men of the earth speaking against him”? No, it is not so either. “But your servant.”

23. Meditated in your statutes,

Is that not a very blessed and admirable way of enduring slander — simply to take your Bible and read a little more than usual? You will cure it by this.

24. Your testimonies also are my delight and my counsellors.

Because I love them and delight in them. I submit my life to their guidance. I go to your Book to ask what I shall do. I consult it as the oracle of God. I take my doubts, and difficulties, and dilemmas there, and I find that they are all handled. “Your testimonies are my delight and my counsellors.”

25. My soul cleaves to the dust: quicken me according to your word.

Ah! there is a note of sadness here. The psalmist complains about himself. He found himself very sorrowful, and he could not get out of the sorrow; or he found himself very full of business cares, and he could not get rid of them. “My soul cleaves to the dust” — as though it was stuck to the dust, and the dust to it, and could not rise. Then how sweet the prayer, “Quicken me.” “Did you not first make me out of dust; and will you not at the last quicken my mortal body out of the dust? Then, now, my Lord, quicken me according to your Word.” See, here is an evil complained about. He finds himself cleaving to the dust. Here is a remedy sought, “Quicken me.” And here is an argument pleaded with God — “according to your Word.” There is a promise for it. Lord, fulfil your word.

26. I have declared my ways, and you heard me: teach me your statutes.

A confession had been made: “I have declared my ways.” That confession had been accepted: “You heard me.” Then a petition is offered: “Teach me your statutes.” “You see that I confess how wrong I was. Now give me grace so that I may not go wrong again.” May that always be our spirit.

27, 28. Make me to understand the way of your precepts: so I shall talk about your wondrous works. My soul melts for heaviness: strengthen me according to your word.

“I am poured out like water,” says the Saviour. “My heart is like wax. It is melted in the midst of my body.” It is the greatness of pain, the greatness of fear, the greatness of sorrow, until he seems to melt away in the fire like wax. “For heaviness,” he says, “my soul melts. Then strengthen me.” Oh! it is so sweet to turn to God when your soul is burdened — to look to him, and say — not “deliver me.” Observe that, the child of God is not so anxious to get rid of trouble, as he is to know how to behave worthily under it. “Strengthen me, according to your Word.” How he harps on that “according to your Word.” The child of God does not expect God to do otherwise than what he has promised to do, and he is quite content if the Lord will act according to his Word, for well does our poet put it: — 

   What more can he say than to you he hath said, — 

   You who unto Jesus for refuge have fled?

In this book, dear brother, whatever your trouble, there is a promise to handle it. If you lose a key and you send for the locksmith, as a general rule, somewhere in that bunch of keys he has a key that will fit your lock. And so here is a bunch of keys, and there is a key here that will exactly fit the lock of your trouble, whatever it may be, for God foresaw the circumstances of all his people, and prepared a promise for every circumstance.

29. Remove from me the way of lying: and grant me your law graciously.

“Take away the evil: give me the good.” “The way of lying.” Oh! it is a dreadful thing to get into that. There are some who have a way of doing it — some who do it playfully — some who do it by implication. Some think it is shrewd to deceive. “Remove from me the way of lying.” If truth should be banished from all the world besides, it ought to find a shelter in the hearts of Christians. The Christian man is forbidden to take an oath, because there should never be any necessity for it. His word — his, “Yea, yea” — his “Nay, nay” should always, be sufficient. Thank God it is, where the grace of God is.

30, 31. I have chosen the way of truth: I have laid your judgments before me. I have clung to your testimonies: oh LORD, do not put me to shame.

Here is, first, choice: “I have chosen the way of truth.” Here is his practically carrying it out: “I have laid your judgments before me.” Here is his perseverance in it: “I have clung to your testimonies.” And then there is his prayer about it: “Oh Lord, do not put me to shame.” And it is a prayer which is sure to be answered. “Truth may be blamed, but it cannot be shamed.” Truth is God’s daughter, and he will take care of her. If you have chosen the way of truth, it is a way in which, though some may censure and slander, your righteousness shall come out, in due time, as the noonday.

32. I will run the way of your commandments, when you shall enlarge my heart.

“When I get liberty of heart, then I will take as my choice, your ways.” The Christian is never so much at liberty as when he is under law to Christ. He knows the difference between licence and liberty. He has a liberty to do as he wills, because he wills to do as God wills him to do; and herein lies the only freedom which we desire.