I cry aloud to the LORD; I lift my voice to the LORD for mercy. Sermons
I. HERE IS A MOST DISTRESSFUL CONDITION SET FORTH. It is described: 1. As being overwhelmed. (Ver. 3.) As if some fierce flood had rushed down upon him and his, and with sore difficulty they could bear up against its cruel might. 2. As being in great need of refuge, but utterly failing to find it. (Ver. 3.) He had looked round on the fight hand and the left, but in vain. 3. As rejected by men. "No man would know me." They had cast him off, would have nothing to do with him, would certainly render no help. 4. As "brought very low." (Ver. 6.) All hope and joy had fled from him; he was utterly cast down. 5. As one shut up in prison. (Ver. 7.) Now, all this sets forth what is often true in the experience of God's people. We are told also - II. How THIS CONDITION WAS BROUGHT ABOUT. 1. By the snares of the wicked. (Ver. 3.) The snare was secretly but surely laid, and the psalmist seems to have fallen into it; it was laid along the path wherein he was wont to walk. He had not wandered off into strange or forbidden ways, but in his own proper and accustomed path, there the snare was secretly set. "The daily round, the common task," may become to us not only the path of life, but the evil one knows how, in the midst of them, to lay, and often too successfully, snares for the soul. 2. By the indifference and apathy of his fellow-men. "No man cared for my soul." It is a thought full of pain and sorrow to many a Christian heart that, by neglect, they have suffered so many souls to go astray. We have not cared for them as we should. When we think of it, we can only say, "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord." But let us also forsake the sin we confess. 3. By persecution. This does often bring the soul "very low." Even our blessed Lord cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But it matters not, so long as we cleave to God. III. WHAT TO DO UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES. 1. Turn to the Lord in fervent prayer. Lay before him all your trouble. Keep well in mind that the Lord who loves you, and whom you love, knoweth the way you take. 2. Call to mind what God has been to you in the past. IV. WHAT SHALL COME OF IT. The Lord will deal bountifully with us. We shall praise the Lord. All the righteous will rejoice. - S.C.
Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth. : — The text presents in a very vivid way an aspect of death most familiar, but most striking, and it also expresses the thoughts and the earnest prayer that rise in a soul at such a sight. You have walked in an old graveyard and seen the bones scattered at the grave's mouth. There are few whom this sight does not make to think. You remember Hamlet in the graveyard with the skull of Yorick, the king's jester. What a pathos and tenderness are there. With that text in his hand, how touchingly he discourses on our poor fleeting human life. "The flashes of merriment that set the table in a roar" — "the infinite jest" — all come to this. The bones that were so carefully nurtured, that cost so much, are knocked and tossed about and thrown into a heap. Every man who contemplates such a spectacle — bones strewn about as if they were but chips and sticks where men had been chopping wood, must either go away with a dangerous sense of the vanity and worthlessness of human life, or with a spirit made intense, and raised in prayer to the infinite God.I. OUR UNION WITS PAST GENERATIONS AND THE INTENSE REALITY OF OUR PRESENT LIFE. Observe the use of the word "our." He looks at the bones and speaks as if they were partly his own, as if they belonged partly to living men. He identifies himself with those past generations. This human life that we are living now is not a new thing. It is old, very old. I understand all the struggles and wide experience of the past, for it is all in me. That history is mine. It seems as if I had lived then and been a part of all this. It is good for us go look back over the past and feel our identity with our race. It makes us humble. It makes us tender and kindly. It fills us with compassion for the human family. We are ashamed at times and vexed and grieved; but we are also elevated and enlarged as we look back over the generations that are gone. They are gone, and how fleeting they have all been. It is like a dream to think of all these past generations of men. Their existence seems a shadow. But let us not think our present life shadowy. No; that is not the lesson which the writer of the psalm learnt from the scattered bones. He learnt intensity. "But mine eyes are toward Thee, O God the Lord. In Thee is my trust. Leave not my soul destitute." Life is new and momentous to us. It is as momentous as if it had never been lived before and would never be lived again. When you think steadily of God, it seems as if there were none but God and you standing over against each other. The man who keeps his eyes directed toward God feels life new and fresh, although the bones of many generations are scattered around him. II. IN THE TEXT WE SEE THE LITTLENESS AND THE GREATNESS OF MAN. 1. The scattered bones proclaim the littleness of man. These are the remains of thinkers, poets, kings, lovers of men, great inventors, famous disputers. 2. Yet, when I think of man in his weakness turning his eyes to the infinite God; when I reflect that man can think of a boundless and perfect One, that man looks to Him, that he has an eye that sees the invisible God: that he claims the society of the Maker of all worlds, and is restless till he finds it; when I reflect on man as putting his trust in the living God amidst all the mysteries of time; when I think of man standing over the grave where his dearest ones lie, where the ruins of his hopes are, and saying there, "I believe in God; I trust in God; He will not leave my soul destitute"; then I see the greatness of man. III. A MELANCHOLY PROSPECT AND A RISING ABOVE IT. 1. The prospect before us all is this: by and by our bones will be scattered about the grave's mouth. By and by you are forgotten, and the white relics that are thrown up by the shovel of the grave-digger are quite unknown. They have no name. Does it not seem like a horrid dream that we should be all coming to this? Surely it cannot be true. We all know too well that it is true and no dream. 2. There is just one remedy, one antidote, one means of conquering all thoughts of this kind; and the text presents it. "Mine eyes are unto Thee, O God the Lord." I see a glorious Being, infinite, eternal, everywhere present, absolute love and truth and holiness. The fact that I can think of this Being of itself inspires hope and courage. It cannot be that the eyes that look to Him can moulder into dust. Eyes that cannot but look to Him are not doomed to grow dim. He Himself has invited me to look to Him, and the sight of His face gives me joy. (J. Leckie, D. D.) Mine eyes are unto Thee, O God. : — The determination to do a certain thing involves the possibility and sometimes the probability of not doing it. The regal faculty of will controls the use of other faculties, which may be exercised in different ways and in different degrees according to its resolve. The desires and aspirations of the soul, like the organs of the body, may be employed in this direction or in that, and of all created beings on earth man has most freedom. Some creatures have eyes adapted for a use which is special and limited. The beast or bird of prey, for example, has for the pupil of its eye a vertical slit, in order that it may look up and down for its victims. The ruminants — oxen, horses, and the like — have a horizontal slit, in order that without special effort they may look for the succulent grass which spreads on each side of them in a fertile meadow. But we have circular pupils — in other words, we have no bias in one direction more than in another, and thus even in these lower capacities God gives us a hint of our responsibility for choice and of our power of will which makes our life a moral probation. Hence you may resolve as the psalmist did, "I will look up," or you may not so resolve.(A. Rowland, B. A.). I cried unto the Lord with my voice. Homilist. I. THE TRIALS HERE REPRESENTED. He speaks of himself as —1. Overwhelmed (ver. 3). 2. Walking in snares (ver. 3). 3. Destitute of friends (ver. 4). 4. Greatly reduced (ver. 6). 5. Greatly persecuted (ver. 6). 6. Imprisoned (ver. 7). Ignorance, poverty, affliction, all these imprison. II. THE RELIGION HERE DISPLAYED. 1. Religion manifesting itself in prayer to God. A practical realization of our dependence on our Maker is true prayer, and this is the essence of religion. Prayer is not language, but life: it is the soul turned ever to the Almighty, as the flower to the sun, as the river to the sea. 2. Religion manifesting itself in practical confidence in God. (1) (2) (1) (2) 3. Religion manifesting itself in unbounded trust in His goodness (ver. 7). (Homilist.) I. THE CONDITION OF A SOUL UNDER A DEEP SENSE OF SIN. A little while ago you were out in the open field of the world, sinning with a high hand, plucking the flowers which grow in those poisoned vales, and enjoying their deadly perfume. To-night you feel like one who has come out of the bright sunshine and balmy air into a dark, noisome cavern, where you can see but little, where there is no comfort, and where there appears to you to be no hope of escape. 1. Well, now, your first business should be to appeal unto God. Get to your knees, you who feel yourselves guilty; get to your knees, if your hearts are sighing on account of sin. 2. Make a full confession unto the Lord. 3. Acknowledge to God that there is no hope for you but in His mercy. In the cave of your doubts and fears, with the clinging damp of your despair about you, chilled and numbed by the dread of the wrath to come, yet venture to make God in Christ your sole confidence, and you shall yet have perfect peace. 4. Then, further, if you are still in the cave of doubt and sin, venture to plead with God to set you free. You cannot present a better prayer than this one of David's (ver. 7). My old friend, Dr. Alexander Fletcher, seems to rise before me now, for I remember hearing him say to the children that, when men came out of prison, they did praise him who had set them free. He said that he was going down the Old Bailey one day, and he saw a boy standing on his head, turning Catherine wheels, dancing hornpipes, and jumping about in all manner of ways, and he said to him, "What are you at? You seem to be tremendously happy"; and the boy replied, "Ah, old gentlemen, if you had been locked up six months, and had just got out, you would be happy, tool" I have no doubt that is very true. When a soul gets out of a far worse prison than there ever was at Newgate, then he must praise "free grace and dying love," and "ring those charming bells" again, and again, and again, and make his whole life musical with the praise of the emancipating Christ. II. THE CONDITION OF A PERSECUTED BELIEVER. Here is a godly man who works in a factory, or a Christian girl who is occupied in book-folding, or-some other work where there is a large number employed; such persons will have a sad tale to tell of now they have been hunted about, ridiculed, and scoffed at by ungodly companions. Now you are in the cave. 1. It may be that you are in the condition described here; you hardly know what to do. You are as David was when he wrote ver. 3. You are like a lamb in the midst of wolves; you know not which way to turn. Well, then, say to the Lord, as David did, "When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then Thou knewest my path." Have confidence that, when you know not what to do, He can and will direct your way if you trust Him. 2. In addition to that, it may be that you are greatly tempted. David said, "They privily laid a snare for me." It is often so with young men in a warehouse, or with a number of clerks in an establishment. Young Christian soldiers often have a very rough time of it in the barracks; but I hope that they will prove themselves true soldiers, and not yield an inch to those who would lead them astray. 3. It will be very painful if, in addition to that, your friends turn against you. David said, "There was no man that would know me." Is it so with you? Are your father and mother against you? Cultivate great love to those who, having come into the army of Christ, are much beset by adversaries. They are in the cave. Do not disown them; they are trying to do their best; stand side by Side with them. 4. It may be that the worst point about you is that you feel very feeble. You say, "I should not mind the persecution if I felt strong; but I am so feeble." Well, now, always distinguish between feeling strong and being strong. The man who feels strong is weak; the man who feels weak is the man who is strong. III. THE CONDITION OF A BELIEVER WHO IS BEING PREPARED FOR GREATER HONOUR AND WIDER SERVICE. Is it not a curious thing that, whenever God means to make a man great, He always breaks him in pieces first? David was to be king over all Israel. What was the way to Jerusalem for David? What was the way to the throne? Well, it was round by the cave of Adullam, He must go there and be an outlaw and an outcast, for that was the way by which he would be made king. Have none of you ever noticed, in your own lives, that whenever God is going to give you an enlargement, and bring you out to a larger sphere of service, or a higher platform of spiritual life, you always get thrown down? Why is that? 1. If God would make you greatly useful, He must teach you how to pray. 2. The man whom God would greatly honour must always believe in God when he is at his wit's end (ver. 3). Oh, it is easy to trust when you can trust yourself; but when you cannot trust yourself, when you are dead beat, when your spirit sinks below zero in the chili of utter despair, then is the time to trust in God. If that is your case, you have the marks of a man who can lead God's people, and be a comforter of others. 3. In order to greater usefulness many a man of God must be taught to stand quite alone (ver. 4). 4. The man whom God will bless must be the man who delights in God alone (ver. 5). Oh, to have God as our refuge, and to make God our portion! 5. He whom God would use must be taught sympathy with God's poor people (ver. 6). If the Lord means to bless you, and to make you very useful in His Church, depend upon it He will try you. 6. If God means to use you, you must get to be full of praise (ver. 7). If thou art of a cheerful spirit, glad in the Lord, and joyous after all thy trials and afflictions, and if thou dost but rejoice the more because thou hast been brought so low, then God is making something of thee, and He will yet use thee to lead His people to greater works of grace. ( C. H. Spurgeon.) (A. Whyte, D. D.) 6688 mercy, demonstration of God's 5088 David, character Out of the Deep of Loneliness, Failure, and Disappointment. The Ceaselessness of Prayer The Theology of St. Hilary of Poitiers. Question of the Contemplative Life Psalms |
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