3460. Praise Beautiful from the Upright

A Sermon Published On Thursday, May 27, 1915.

Praise is beautiful from the upright. {Ps 33:1}

1. The psalmist was full of praise, and therefore felt that he could not fully express the glory of God, but desired to enlist others in the sacred service. You hear him often calling on sea and land, on earth and heaven, on mountain and valley, on plants and creeping things, on living creatures, on the heavens and the heavens that are above the heavens, to assist him in magnifying the name of the Infinite Jehovah, whose praise still exceeds all the honour that can be given to him by all his creatures. Praise has a blessed contagion in it. It is like fire; if it burns its way in one place, it will be spreading itself if it can. A man cannot praise God alone. There will always be within him a high ambition to teach others to take up the strain. He will always be longing and desiring to lead others in the same sweet occupation. Now let us seem to hear across these ages the voices of those who are with their God as they cry to us, “Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous, for praise is beautiful from the upright.”

2. I have taken for a text that one sentence; and I will speak of it under four short words which may serve as headings—four words of question.

3. I. The first is:—WHAT?

4. What is it which is so beautiful, so beautiful from the upright? It is praise, the praise of God, and this praise of God, though it is always the same thing, the same spiritual thing produced by the Spirit of God, yet takes different forms, and in each form it is still beautiful from the upright. It is so in that delightful form of music in which we express with accord, hearts and voices keeping tune together, in the great congregation our sense of united adoration. I think there is nothing more beautiful than the sweet songs of the sanctuary, and what our friends of the Society of Friends {Quakers} do without singing I scarcely know. I think they will have to recant that one thing at least when they enter heaven, for surely they cannot be silent there, where all shall join in songs like great thunder, and like the mighty rolling of the sea in praise of the infinite majesty of him who was slain, but who lives for ever. I think we could not give up our song in any way. We should feel as if the Sabbath were shorn of its bloom, as if you had picked the flowers out of the garden of the soul. Our soul must sing, yes, she will sing praises to the Lord. So natural does it seem to the renewed heart to join in praise with others, that even when lying in the dungeon, after having been beaten severely with stripes, and with their feet firm in the stocks, Paul and Silas did not only pray, but they sang praises to God, and praise was beautiful there. It has been beautiful in many a prison where no one has heard the sound but God. It has been beautiful among the glens of Scotland, when the Covenanters lifted up the psalm. It has been beautiful in nooks and crannies of England when Puritans, in fear of their lives, nevertheless magnified the name of the Lord. It has been beautiful at the stakes at Smithfield; {a} beautiful from Anne Askew’s lips, {b} when she was on the rack, stretched to the utmost. It has been beautiful anywhere when the voice has poured out itself with musical rhythm in the praise of the Most High.

5. But there is a second form of vocal praise which is equally beautiful from the upright—the spoken praise of God. I allude to those praises which consist of commendation of the name, and person, and service, and goodness of the Lord by private Christians to their fellow men. Do not think that all praise is restricted to singing. It is the praise of God when the mother tells her child of the goodness of him, who made the stars, and who spread the world with flowers. It is praise when the young convert speaks of the joy of his heart to his companion, and tells him to go to the fountain where he has washed and been made clean. It is praise, praise of a high order, too, when the advanced believer in his old age speaks of the faithfulness of God, and how not one good thing has failed of all that the Lord God has promised; and while praise seems to sit in such a beautiful manner on the young convert, that it seems to be the most natural thing in all the world for him to praise, it is equally beautiful in the aged Christian, for he seems to feel that if such a man as he, preserved for so long, did not praise God, the very stones in the street would cry out against him.

6. That praise which consists in living, loving, personal testimony to the goodness and faithfulness of the Lord is always beautiful from the upright. I wish that some Christians would remember that murmuring is not beautiful; that envying others, that finding fault, that ambition, that desiring greater things—that all these are not beautiful, but the speaking well of his name, the testimony to his faithfulness in providence and to his goodness in grace—this is beautiful from the upright.

7. But the best praise, perhaps, is what is not expressed in language, because it could not be—meditative praise. I fear there is very little of this in London. I am not sure that there is any more of it in the country, though there ought to be a great deal more of it in both. I mean such praise as this—when, like David, we sit before the Lord and think of his very great bounty, and then say, “What am I, and what is my father’s house that you have brought me so far?” I mean the praise that makes the tear unbidden come to the eye, not the tear of sorrow, but the tear of overwhelming gratitude for the goodness of God, so that the soul, without making use of words, seems to say:—

   When all thy mercies, oh my God,

      My rising soul surveys,

   Transported with the view, I’m lost

      In wonder, love, and praise;

when thoughts become too heavy for words to carry them; when they break the backs of words, as it were; when “expressive silence,” as the poet calls it, has to come to the rescue, and the man is compelled rather to fall prostrate before the infinite majesty and goodness than to venture on a sonnet that would fall flat in the presence of such emotions.

   Words are but air, and tongues but clay,

   And thy compassions are divine.

Where, then, shall it be found possible for words and for tongues to worthily express your praise? I am sure it would be a very refreshing thing for us all, acceptable to God, and very blessed to ourselves, if we had more of this quiet praise, if we could get to see those cool retreats, those silent shady places, that agree with prayer and praise, and seem, by God’s kind bounty, made for those who would worship him. Such praise is beautiful from the upright. I like to think of George Herbert walking through the Parsonage Garden, and up and down by the banks of the brook, singing within himself of his God, and of those other holy men who led meditative lives. It seems to fit them as an attractive vest that is beautiful on their shoulders when they are engaged in the meditative praise of God.

8. But one more remark, sometimes praise does not even fall into the form of meditation, much less of conversation or of song; it becomes—what shall I call it?—habitual praise—the spirit of praise. I will indicate one or two brothers and sisters in this congregation who, if it were the depth of winter, would create a smile in my vestry if they would only enter it; who, whenever I meet them, their eyes sparkle like stars; their lips drop pearls; they never seem to be unhappy; never doubting, never unbelieving. They are sure to speak every Sabbath morning, “We shall have a good day today; there has been much prayer about it, and God always answers prayer; you will be graciously helped through it; be of good courage”; and on the Sabbath night it is, “This has been a good Sabbath.” In fact, they say they never have anything but good Sabbaths; they always seem to be fed, and they are always rejoicing, and if you talk to them, they are not the youngest people in the congregation, perhaps; they may not be the richest, they may not be in the best circumstances, but they are always the most cheerful, always the most happy, and they can say:—

   We would not change our blest estate

   For all the world calls good or great.

Now, believe me, I think this is most beautiful from the upright when men or women shall get into the spirit of praise so that they shall be always blessing God. Why, it is such a beautiful dress to wear that they shine in the family, they shine in business, they shine in the church, they shine in the eyes of angels, who think that they must be angels, too, they have gotten into such an angelic frame of mind.

9. Such a man was Bernard Gilpin, who always said “it was all for the best.” If it was fair, it was all for the best; or if there had been any rain, it was all for the best. If it was hot or was cold, it was all for the best. Bernard was arrested by the queen’s order to be brought to London to be burned, but he said it was all for the best. The soldiers, knowing of this expression of his, jeered him all along the journey with blasphemies, and when his horse fell and he broke his leg, they laughed, but he said; it was all for the best. He was laid on the road for a surgeon to set his bones, but he said it was all for the best, and so it proved to be, for this delayed them, and when they got just within sight of London they could hear the bells ringing, and, on enquiry, they learned that Queen Mary was dead and Queen Elizabeth I had succeeded her; so that Mr. Bernard Gilpin had arrived in London just three days too late to be burned, and he was quite correct in saying that it was all for the best. But I have no doubt that if he had gone to the stake he would have said it was all for the best, and certainly his emancipated spirit, as it left its charred ashes behind, would have sang, “Yes, it is all for the best.” Now that state of heart, not the act of praise, but the spirit of praise, in which the soul seems to swim in praise, as the fish swims in the river, and to bathe and perfume itself with thanksgiving, as Esther perfumed herself in Ahasuerus’ palace—such a state of heart as this is extremely beautiful from the upright. That is the answer to the question—What?

10. II. The next question is:—WHY?

11. Why is praise so befitting and becoming to the upright? We answer that it is so, and you will soon see it, from the nature of things. Wings are most becoming to an angel. You would not think of drawing one of those spirits that are like flames of fire without giving it wings. What for? Why, to mount with, to make him ethereal, to quicken his motions. Well, and the Christian without praise would be without his wings. What is he to mount with? He does not wish to grovel here below, fond of these earthly toys, but how is he to mount? Prayer gives him one wing, but praise must give him the other, and when he gets prayer and praise, oh! how he seems to leave sublunary things behind, and away he flies, borne by the strong help of the eternal Spirit up to:—

   Where eternal ages roll,

   Where solid pleasures never die,

   And fruits immortal feast the soul.

Take away the Christian’s power of praising God, and you make him a poor earthworm, bound here with doubts, and fears, and cares; but let him only kindle in his soul the flame that burns in heaven of seraphic love for God, and away he mounts.

12. Praise is beautiful from the upright, in the next place, from the office of the believer. When Aaron put on his breast-plate, his belt, his ephod, and his bells, everyone said that the garment was beautiful on Aaron. It would not have been beautiful on us, because we would have no right to wear it, but the office of Aaron made it beautiful on him. You would not think it was beautiful if I were to come here to preach to you tonight with a red coat on. You would have said, “No, that red coat is very beautiful on the soldier; it suites him; but it does not suit the minister.” Now the Christian is a priest, and praise is a part of the garment of a priest that he must wear. Praise is the occupation of a priest. Inasmuch as we are kings and priests to God, it becomes us that we should swing that golden censer that is full of thanksgiving, and that we should stand before the golden altar, and continually offer sacrifice and praise acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. It suits our nature, and suits our office, and therefore it is beautiful from the upright.

13. Praise is beautiful from the upright, as flowers and fruits are beautiful for a plant. Every plant bears fruit that is suited for it, and the greatest beauty for the apple tree in the garden is to see it loaded with its wondrous blossoms, the most beautiful things in all the world, and then afterwards to see the boughs hanging down with luscious fruit. The beauty of a plant lies in its coming to perfection and bearing its fruit. So with Christians. The barren Christian has no beauty, but the beauty of the Christian, his spiritual beauty, lies in his producing fruit for God, and what is this but praise? “Whoever offers praise glorifies me,” says the Lord. Man is made on purpose to glorify God. It is his main purpose. Then his main purpose is beautiful from him. If he serves his purpose, he is beautiful to him who made him, and inasmuch as our main purpose is to glorify God, praise becomes beautiful from the upright.

14. Once again; praise is beautiful from the upright as a crown is beautiful on a king. It is his highest honour, his chief dignity. It is one of our highest honours to praise God—praise him, that we are his elected, his begotten; that we are his redeemed, his sanctified, his preserved people. When we get to this we occupy as high a standard as we well can do short of heaven, and in heaven I do not know if we shall ever seem more beautiful than when we are, with all the hosts of angels, praising and magnifying the name of the Lord. When we praise God we do, as it were, put on our crowns, as when they before the throne praise God they also come with their crowns, but make it part of their praise to put them off again, with, “Not to us, not to us, oh Lord, but to your name be glory!”

15. Now, Christian, just treasure up this thought, that praise is beautiful from the upright. There are a great many people in the world who think a great deal of their personal appearance. How they will look in that mirror! How they will turn that hair again! How they arrange that dress! There must not be a pin awry. What does it matter? After you have dressed yourselves as best you may, flies, bees, and insects of all kinds still excel you. When you have glorified yourselves to the pitch of Solomon, still you cannot match the lilies; they still excel you. But that idea of beauty ought to be turned into a better channel. If I want to make myself beautiful, why should I not desire to be beautiful in the esteem of those whose opinion is worth the having, and beautiful in the eyes of God? How can this be, then? Well, if I have, first of all, been covered with the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ, which are the true beauty of the Christian, then the next thing to make me beautiful is to praise God, to keep his praises continually on my lips. If I begin complaining and mourning when I am hard done by, I am, as it were, only scratching my own face; it is not beautiful for me; I am putting on rags; I am soiling my garments; I am pulling off my gold rings; I am stripping myself of my ornaments. But if I praise God, then I am acting according to my better nature, according to my office; I am acting in the most honourable capacity possible, and I am serving the purpose for which God made me. Therefore, you who want to be thought beautiful, be continually praising God.

16. III. And now, in the third place, another little word to help your memories, and that shall be:—WHEN?

17. “Praise is beautiful from the upright”; but when? Nowadays what is beautiful one day is not beautiful the next, for the fashions change so continually. But let me tell you that the spiritual fashions never alter, and what God declares to be beautiful today will be beautiful next year, and beautiful for ever. Praise is never out of fashion, never out of season, never out-of-date. You may praise God and utter even the same sentiments as came from the lips of Enoch, and there shall be nothing stale in it; still, it shall be beautiful. When is it beautiful for Christians to praise God? My answer is always. It must include all seasons and all places. It is never out of place to praise God. When the congregation has met and the service has begun, it is the time to lift up the voice unanimously; oh! it is beautiful then for the believer to praise the Most High God. If there are only two or three who are met together in some lowly schoolroom, or a shed, or a barn, or under the forest trees; or half-a-dozen on the deck of a vessel, or down in the cabin or the forecastle—it does not matter where, let us pitch our tent and sing one of the songs of Zion. Praise is beautiful from the upright from half-a-dozen in some backwoods settlement, or out in the bush, at a settlers log hut. Sweet everywhere, it is unacceptable nowhere. Praise is beautiful in all such places when the saints come together.

18. And, brethren, praise is beautiful from the Christian at any season. If he wakes in the morning, he sings:—

   Awake! lift up thyself, my heart,

   And with the angels bear thy part,

   Who all night long unwearied sing

   High praises to the Eternal King.

His morning praise, glistening with dew, is beautiful. And if in the night-watches he tosses restlessly on the bed, why, praise at night again is sweet, and so it will be from the believer if he can sing the praises of the Lord then. When you are cracking your whip, you who drive a cart in the streets, why, you can sing one of the songs of Zion there. There is many a light and frothy song sung there; why should not ours be sung too? It will be beautiful from the upright. When you are in the field digging, ploughing, hay-making, harvesting; when you good girls are at work at the needle, or the sewing machine, or bookbinding, or whatever it is; you mothers, rocking your cradles, or whatever it may be—praise will not seem out of place if you are upright in heart. Praise will be beautiful from you on all occasions then.

19. But there are certain occasions when praise has a particular beauty. For example, praise is beautiful from the upright when you are in poverty. It is easy to praise God when you have all you want. Who would not? A dog will follow you when you feed him. But to praise God when he takes away those gifts that you prize the most—oh! this is beautiful praise indeed. To say, with Job, “Though he kills me, yet I will trust in him; Shall we receive good from the hand of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil?”—that is praise. Let me just say that when we lie on the bed, and pain shoots through us, some of us men, who are a great deal more impatient than women are, do not find it very easy to praise God then, and yet oh! it is blessed when we can tune the heart-strings at last and get them right, and bless the Lord who lives, who will yet bring us up from languishing, and restore us from the gates of the grave. Praise in the midst of bodily pain—headache, heart-ache, or any form of disease, is very beautiful from the upright. And to praise God when some beloved one on whom your heart is set is sickening—that is hard, but it is very beautiful. To see him on whom all your earthly dependence is fixed sickening and pining, and yet to say, “The Lord’s will be done, and blessed be his name,” oh! it is so beautiful that I do not know that any of the angels in heaven have such a piece of praise so rich and rare as that of the song of resignation when beloved ones are going. And when the earth rattles on the coffin lid of a dear child, or a friend, or a beloved wife, then to be able to say, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord”—such praise as that is very beautiful from the upright. And when these things meet—deaths, and sicknesses, and poverty, come like many seas meeting at one place, let me tell you that the harder it is to sing, the more beautiful it is to do it. There is no music, perhaps, that we relish so much as the song of the nightingale, and that is because it sings in the night, and there is no praise more acceptable to God than the songs of his people in the night when they can praise him under distress. I have read a saying by an old writer that God’s birds sing best in cages, and so they do when the cages have in them some affliction and trial. Then they pour out their notes sweetly, magnifying the name of the Lord. If I am asked, then, when should the believer praise God, I say, especially in the time of trial.

20. I may say yet again, that we never praise God, I think, so acceptably as when others are blaspheming and profaning his name. For the believer then to venture his testimony in the teeth of all defiance, to thrust himself in the way of jeers and sneers for Christ’s sake, to bless God when others curse him—this is very beautiful from a cross-bearer, from a servant of him who laid down his life for his Father’s glory. And in times when you come to be slandered, and your name is evil spoken of, and your religion is said to be rant, and your actions misrepresented, and your motives misconstrued—it is a grand thing then to praise God, and say:—

   If on my face, for thy dear name,

      Shame and reproach shall be;

   I’ll hail reproach and welcome shame,

      If thou remember me.

At such times, again, praise is sweet.

21. But, beloved, there is an hour coming when praise will be most beautiful of all—I mean when this mortal frame shall dissolve, and our spirits shall be entering into an unseen world. It is not every believer who dies singing. It is not necessary for his safety that he should do so, but oh! it is so beautiful if he can do it. Just as music is said to sound very sweetly over the water, so certainly over the billows of death the song of the triumphant Christian comes with special sweetness. I shall always remember with great delight one verse of a hymn which I heard from a dying Christian, who had become blind just before his death, and which has always since been invested in my memory with a melody I never heard in it before:—

   And when ye see my eye-strings break,

      How sweet my minutes roll;

   Mortal paleness on my cheek,

      But glory in my soul.

Ah! it is beautiful from the upright to be praising God when heart and flesh are failing.

22. IV. But I must leave that, and I shall finish with another little word, and that is:—WHOM?

23. Praise is beautiful—not from everyone—but from the upright. It is a very sad reflection that during this week some of the most glorious music that ever was composed to some of the noblest words that have ever been written, has been sung—and I do not altogether disapprove of it—but sung, I fear, by some who have no part nor lot in what they are singing. I refer to Handel’s glorious music—the noblest sounds, I think, next to the songs of angels, and one of the highest and holiest pleasures of earth to listen to. But there are singers there who know nothing of God, or of his praise. It is very sad to think of it, but then it is just the same here on the Sabbaths—just the same. You sing, but you do not sing. The sound is there, but not the heart in the song. As for your professional singing on a Sabbath, I believe that that is earthly, sensual, outright devilish. We have heard say of our friends in America that in some of their churches the choir is so much esteemed and so highly esteems itself that if the congregation were to sing they would almost frown on them to put them out of tune, and that there is very little sound of the congregation’s singing heard compared with those half-a-dozen perhaps as wicked singers as the music halls could find, stuck up there to glorify God by insulting him. There has been a good deal of that done in England too. Some of our churches have gone and picked up people according to their sweet voices, and have said, “Now you praise God at so much per week.” But the thing will not do; every conscience is convinced that it is wrong, and the text utterly condemns it, for praise is beautiful from the upright; it is not beautiful from anyone else.

24. The upright—do you notice that word? It is a grand word, that word upright. It is not the man who goes out of his way here and there; it is not the crooked man; it is the upright man. No one praises God like the man that stands upright. God will have a straight musical instrument; he will not have it crooked. If we are to praise him, we must be upright. And notice, being upright consists in perfect independence of everything, except God. The upright man does not lean on anything else, but stands right straight up. Now when a man says, “I should like to be a Christian, but—”; you are not upright. “I would be honest, but—,” you are not upright. “I would make a profession of religion, but—”; you are not upright. He who has two objects, two purposes, who holds with the world and holds with God, is not upright, and he cannot praise God. But when a man has been created anew in Christ Jesus, when he has been taught what the right path is, and grace given to him to follow it, and who says, “Now, come fair or come foul, my trust is in the living God; I would not lie, though it were to gain a world; nor would I cheat, though it were to win heaven itself; I am above these things, since God has promised that he will never leave me, nor forsake me”—when a man stands upright like this he makes very blessed music, and such us God’s ears accept.

25. But your crooked tradesmen, and your merchants who can cheat, and your sneaks, and your fraudulent bankrupts, and I do not know what else besides—God wants no music from them. It is no credit to a man to be praised by a rogue, and it is no credit to God to be praised by a man who has no character. When a man has character and lives up to it as a Christian man, then it becomes honourable to God to be praised by him. If I heard a bad man speak well of God, I should say, “Ah! I do not like that; as a jewel of gold set in a swine’s snout, so is a good word from such a man as that.” I am sure, if I lived near any of you, and esteemed your character very highly, and I heard all the blackguards in London say what a good soul you were, I should begin to ask if you had not done something amiss, if you had not done something wrong. One of the philosophers said when he was praised by a bad man, “What have I done wrong that I should deserve to be praised by such a man as this?” and when ungodly men praise God we might almost say, “What has God done that such a one as this should praise him?” Praise is not beautiful from such; it does not seem right at all. It is either a mere form without life, and consequently a dead thing that God cannot accept, or else it is hypocritical, and God will not accept that; or else it is a downright insult, and that is to be avoided at all costs. Praise is beautiful from the upright.

26. Then, my dear friends, are you upright? Have you, first of all, been laid flat and brought to the horizontal? If so, then you will soon come to the perpendicular. A man must be brought to lie flat before the throne of grace, confessing his own nothingness, and he must look up to the cross of Christ and rest there, or else he has not learned yet what it is to stand upright, for only this can produce stability of principle—faith in the living God, and the believing man stands where all others fall. Oh! to have this uprightness of heart. If you have it, then go and praise God. It is beautiful from you. Do not cease from it, but say, in the words at our hymn:—

   I’ll praise him in life, I’ll praise him in death;

   I’ll praise him as long as he lendeth me breath;

   And say when the death-dew lies cold on my brow,

   “If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, ‘tis now.”

Amen.

{a} Smithfield: The place where the fires that Queen Mary (1553-1558) ordered to be lit to put to death such Protestant leaders and men of influence as Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer and Hooper, but also hundreds of lesser men who refused to adopt the Catholic faith. See Explorer "http://www.britannia.com/history/narrefhist3.html"
{b} Anne Askew: (1520/1521-July 16, 1546) was an English poet and Protestant who was persecuted as a heretic. She is the only woman on record to have been tortured in the Tower of London before being burnt at the stake. See Explorer "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Askew"

Expositions By C. H. Spurgeon {Ps 130; 1Jo 1:4-7}

Psalm 130

1. Out of the depths I have cried to you, oh Lord.

The most eminent of God’s saints have been in the depths; why, then, should I murmur if I have to endure trials? What am I that I should be exempt from warfare? How can I expect to win the crown without first carrying the cross? David saw the depths, and so must you and I. But David learned to cry to God out of the depths. Learn by this that there is no place so deep that prayer can reach from the bottom of it up to God’s ear, and then God’s long arm can reach to the bottom and bring us up out of the depth. “Out of the depths I have cried to you, oh Lord.” Do not say, “Out of the depths I have talked to my neighbours, and sought consolation from my friends.”

   Were half the breath thus vainly spent,

   To heaven in supplication sent,

   Your cheerful song would often be

   Hear what the Lord hath done for me.

2. Lord, hear my voice: let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.

Now a main part of prayer must be occupied by confession, and the psalmist proceeds therefore:—

3. If you, Lord, should note iniquities, oh Lord, who shall stand?

That is to say, apart from Christ, if God exercises his justice to its utmost severity, the best of men must fall, for the best of men, being men at the best, are sinners even at their best state.

4. But there is forgiveness with you, that you may be feared.

If there were no mercy, there would be no love in any human heart, and there would be an end to religion if there were an end to forgiveness. Here let us observe that the best of men dare not stand before an absolute God, that the holiest of God’s saints need to be accepted on the basis of a Mediator, and to receive forgiveness of sins.

5. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and I hope in his word.

There is a waiting of expectancy; we believe that he is about to give us the mercy, and hold out the hand for it. There is a waiting of resignation; we do not know what God may do, nor when he may appear, but we wait. Aaron held his peace; it is a great virtue to wait for God when we do not know what he is doing, but to wait for his own explanations, and be content to go without explanations if he does not choose to give them.

6. My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning: I say, more than those who watch for the morning.

And many a mariner has watched for the morning with an awful anxiety, for he could not know where his vessel was until the day should break. Many a weary patient, tossed on the bed of pain, has waited for the morning, saying, “Oh that it were morning, for then, perhaps, I might find ease.” And you know that sometimes the watchers on the top of the castle, who have to be guarding the ramparts against the adversary by night, watch for the morning. So David’s soul watches. Lord, if I may not have you, permit me to watch for you. Oh! there is some happiness even in waiting for an absent God. I remember that Rutherford says, “I do not see how I can be unhappy, for if Christ will not love me, if he will only permit me to love him, and I feel I cannot help doing that, the loving of him will be heaven enough for me.” Waiting for God is sweet, inexpressibly delightful.

   To those who call, how kind you are,

   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,

   No one but his loved ones know.

Happy are those who, having waited patiently, at last behold their God.

7, 8. Let Israel hope in the Lord: for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all their iniquities.

He shall do this in a double and perfect way; he shall redeem us from the effect of all our iniquities through the atoning sacrifice, and from the presence of all iniquity by his sanctifying Spirit. They are without fault before the throne of God. “‘I will purge their blood that I have not cleansed,’ says the Lord who dwells in Zion.” May my soul have a part and lot in this precious promise!

1 John 1

4. And we write these things to you, so that your joy may be full.

Some Christians have joy, but there are only a few drops in the bottom of their cup; but the Scriptures were written, and more especially the doctrine of an Incarnate God is revealed to us so that our joy may be full. Why, if you have nothing else to make you glad, the fact that Jesus has become a brother to you, arrayed in your flesh, should make your joy full.

5. This then is the message which we have heard from him, and declare to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

Not a light, nor the light, though he is both, but that he is light. Scripture uses the term light for knowledge, for purity, for prosperity, for happiness, and for truth. God is light, and then in his usual style John, who not only tells you a truth, but always guards it, adds, “in whom is no darkness at all.”

6. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not practise the truth.

Note here, this does not mean walking in the darkness of sorrow, for there are many of God’s people who walk in the darkness of doubts and fears, and yet they have fellowship with God; indeed, they sometimes have fellowship with Christ all the better for the darkness of the path along which they walk; but the darkness meant here is the darkness of sin, the darkness of untruthfulness. If I walk in a lie, or walk in sin, and then profess to have fellowship with God, I have lied, and do not practise the truth.

7. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light,

Not to the same degree, but in the same manner.

7. We have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.

So you see that when we walk the best, when we walk in the light as he is in the light, when our fellowship is of the highest order, yet still we need daily cleansing. It does not say—notice this, oh my soul—it does not say, The blood of Jesus Christ “cleansed,” but “cleanses.” If guilt returns, his power may be proved again and again; there is no fear that all my daily slips and shortcomings shall be graciously not removed by this precious blood. But there are some who think they are perfectly sanctified and have no sin.