This is called a parable; yet it is rather an incident, an anecdote, a statement of facts. You will observe that our Lord never used a fable. Fables may be employed to set forth that which is earth-born; but the parable, which is in itself true, is alone adapted to set forth spiritual truths. I say this just now because, the other day, I read an assertion that the story of the rich man and Lazarus was only a fable, like that of Jotham. But the most of our Lord’s parables are not only parables, but literal facts; and all of them might be facts. I would almost go the length of saying that all of them have been actual facts; and in this case there is nothing parabolic at all. It is the statement of an incident which did literally occur, for truth is best illustrated by truth; and as Christ had nothing to teach but what was pure truth, he illustrated it by truth, and never went into the realm of fiction, or invented a tale, or told a story which was not a fact, much less did he ever teach by a mere fable.

There were two men who went into the temple to pray, they prayed just in the way that our Lord describes, and they went away, the one justified, and the other without a blessing. I am not going into the full teaching of the parable on this occasion; but I want to make a few observations concerning public worship in the Lord’s house. Commencing to preach again on Thursday nights, after my season of rest, I thought that this sermon should be a sort of preface or introduction to our gatherings for prayer, and praise, and preaching, and bearing the Word. God grant us a blessing in beginning again this holy employment; and may we be in health and strength and spiritual vigour, and be of some use to the people of God!

Commencing, then, I would say, first, that it is well to worship God in public: “Two men went up into the temple to pray.”

It is good to pray anywhere. He that does not pray in his closet is but a hypocrite when he pretends to pray in the temple. Yet, though we pray in the closet, though we get into such a habit of prayer and are so full of the spirit of prayer that we can pray anywhere, yet it is well to go and mingle with others, and openly worship God who delights to be thus worshipped. It was written very early in the history of our race, “Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.” It has been the custom of the godly to meet for worship in all times. The sheep of Christ are gregarious; this is their nature, they love to gather themselves into congregations, to feed in the same pasture, and to enjoy together the presence of their great Shepherd. It will always be so; the more pious and godly men are alone, the more will they love associated worship. If it should ever happily come to pass that each feeble one among us should be as David, and every David should be as the angel of the Lord, yet even then we should find strength and help in our service for God by meeting together for united worship. The apostolic command is, “Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” Public worship is not everything; if there were no private worship, it would be nothing by itself. To go up to the temple, is not everything. The man who does not meet God outside the temple will not meet God inside the temple, he may rest assured of that.

Yet, it is well, it is desirable, that it should be said of us as it was said of the men mentioned in our text, “Two men went up into the temple to pray.” For public worship is, first of all, an open avowal of our faith in God, and of our belief in prayer. If we pray in private, nobody knows it; at least, nobody should know it, for our Lord’s direction is very plain, “Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” Our acts of personal devotion must be sacred to God and our own souls; but when we go up to the public assembly, whether it be but of two or three, or of many thousands, it matters not, there is to that extent an open declaration that we believe in God, that, let others do as they may, as for us, we worship him, we believe in the reality and power and usefulness of prayer, and, therefore, in the light of day, before all men, we gather ourselves together to pray. I thank God that there is, in this unbelieving London, by so many thousands of assemblies of worshipping people, a public testimony constantly borne to the fact that we do believe in God, and that we do believe in prayer.

Public worship is also, in the next place, a good way of securing unity in prayer. A number of persons may agree to pray about one thing, yet they may never see each other’s faces; their prayers may blend at the mercy-seat, but they must lack an emphatic consciousness of unity such as we have who come together to pray. Our Lord Jesus promised his special presence to the united gatherings of his people when he said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Oh, dear friends, what should we do if we were not able to come together to mingle our sighs and cries and tears, and, better still, to blend our joys, our psalms, our shouts of victory? As we are members of one mystical body, it is but right that we should, as members of that one body, worship together, lifting up the joyous song in tuneful harmony, and blending our supplications,-

“Around our common mercy-seat.”

I think also that public worship is a great means of quickening. At any rate, it is so to me. I never feel that I can pray so well as when I am in the midst of my own dear friends; and, oftentimes, when things are flagging within the soul, to get together with brighter spirits, in whom the life of God is more vigorous, is a great help. It does not seem so very long ago,-although these spectacles and my many grey hairs tell me that it must have been long since,-that I used to say to my mother that hymn which begins,-

“Lord, how delightful ’tis to see

A whole assembly worship thee!

At once they sing, at once they pray;

They hear of heaven, and learn the way.”

Dr. Watts put it very well; and I can utter the same sentiment,-

“Lord how delightful ’tis to see

This vast assembly worship thee!”

when the house is full from floor to ceiling,-

“At once they sing, at once they pray;

They hear of heaven, and learn the way.”

Those two men, of whom our Saviour spoke, did well to go up to the temple to pray; and we shall do well not to cease from the habit of assembling ourselves together for public worship in the Lord’s house.

Then, dear friends, public worship is a part of the great system by which God blesses the world. It has much to do with the gathering, the sustenance, the strengthening, the invigorating, and the extension of the Church of Christ; and it is through the Church of Christ that God accomplishes his purposes in the world. Oh, the blessings that come to us in our public assemblies! Are there not, sometimes, days of heaven upon earth? Have we not felt our hearts burning within us when we have been listening to the Word, or joining in the praise or the prayer? Those houses of God where the gospel is truly preached, whatever their architecture may be, are the beauty and the bulwarks of the land. God bless them! Wherever the Lord’s people are gathered together, in a cathedral or in a barn,-it does not matter where,-it is none other than the house of God, and the very gate of heaven when God is there; and who among us would dare to stay away? As long as we have legs to carry us, and health with which to use those legs, let us be found among the waiting assemblies in God’s sanctuary.

For, once more, it seems to me that public worship on earth is a rehearsal for the service of heaven. We shall sing together there, brethren, not solos, but grand chorales and choruses. We shall take parts in the divine oratorio of redemption; it will not be some one melodious voice alone that shall lift up the eternal hallelujah. I spoke playfully of our brother Mayers singing the Hallelujah Chorus all by himself; but neither he nor any other man can do that; we shall all have to take our parts to make the harmony complete. I may never be able to rise to certain notes unless my voice shall be wondrously changed; but some other sinner, saved by grace, will run up the scale, nobody knows how high; and what a range of melody the music will have in heaven! I believe that our poor scales and modes of singing here are nothing at all compared with what there will be in the upper regions. There, the bass shall be deeper and yet the notes shall be higher than those of earth; even the crash of the loudest thunders shall be only like a whisper in comparison with the celestial music of the new song before the throne of God. John spoke of it as “the voice of many waters.” The waves of one ocean can make a deafening, booming noise; but in heaven there shall be, as it were, the sound of sea on sea, Atlantic upon Pacific, one piled upon another, and all dashing and crashing with the everlasting hallelujahs from the gladsome hearts of the multitude that no man can number. I expect to be there, and I remember that verse in one of our hymns that says,-

“I would begin the music here,

And so my soul should rise;

Oh, for some heavenly notes to bear

My passions to the skies!”

But you cannot sing that heavenly anthem alone, because, however well you can sing by yourself, that is not the way you will have to sing in heaven, there you will have to sing in harmony with all the bloodwashed hosts. Therefore let us often come up to the Lord’s house; and when we are gathered together, let us again take up the words of Dr. Watts, and say,-

“I have been there and still would go,

’Tis like a little heaven below.”

That little heaven below shall help to prepare us for the great heaven above.

That is our first observation, then. It is well to worship God in public.

Secondly, it is well to have an errand when we go up to public worship. “Two men went up into the temple to pray.” They went there for that express purpose.

Now, whenever we go to the assembly of God’s people, we should have some good errand, and the right errand is that which these two men had, they went up to the temple to pray. I would rather that you came with a bad errand than that you did not come at all. I have known people come to pick pockets, and yet they have gone away with a blessing. I am sorry if any of you came to-night on that errand, yet I am glad that you are here; perhaps friends will prevent you committing the sin of theft by taking a little extra care of their pockets. I have known persons go into the house of God out of sheer mockery, and yet God has blessed them, for his ways are strangely sovereign. But that is to be ascribed to matchless mercy, and it is not the way we ought to appear before the Lord.

When we go to the sanctuary, we should go on an errand, we should go up to pray; we should not go merely from custom. Do we not often do that? Not so much on Thursday nights, I think, for people come then because they like to come; but on Sundays it is such a proper thing with certain persons to go to a place of worship that they almost wish it was not so proper, and they would like to have a good excuse for stopping at home. Well, if you come only out of custom, and you do not get a blessing, I pray you do not wonder at it. If you do not come for anything, and you do not get anything, do not be disappointed. If you go to a shop across the road, and do not mean to buy anything, do not be surprised if you come out without anything; and if you come here, and do not want anything, very well, you will go away with nothing. Is it not just what you might have expected? He who goes to the river, and takes no rod or net with him, will have no fish in his basket, even though there may be shoals of them in the water. So, if we want to be blessed in our worship, we must come with an errand, even as these two men went up into the temple “to pray.”

Neither do I think that we should come up to the assembly of God’s people merely to hear sermons. The proper thing is to come “to pray.” “But we do hear sermons,” says one. Yet, I hope that does not hinder your praying. Somebody said, the other day, that people who go to church go to pray, but that we who go to chapel go to hear sermons. My dear friend, that remark shows what sort of sermons you get at church, because those who come to hear us preach pray while we are preaching, and they find that there is nothing that helps them to pray as much as a good sermon does. In fact, there is no worship of God that is better than the hearing of a sermon. I venture to say that, if a sermon be well heard, it puts faith in exercise as you believe it, it puts love in exercise as you enjoy it, it puts gratitude in exercise as you think of all the blessings that God has given to you. If the sermon be what it should be, it stirs all the coals of fire in your spirit, and makes them burn with a brighter flame, and a more vehement heat. To imply that hearing a sermon is not worship, is really to slander your minister. It must be a very bad sermon in which there is, as it were, a jerk out of the prayers to get into it, for the supplication should lead up to the sermon, and then the discourse should be a continuation of the prayer that has preceded it, and bring it back upon the mind again, so that all present may pray the better and worship God the more acceptably because of the discourse to which they have been listening.

Still, if anybody comes to hear a sermon, especially as, perhaps, some of you came while I was away, to criticize the preacher, that is not the way to get a blessing. I do not mind if you criticize me; you may do that when you like, only you will not get blessed by doing it; but when there are other preachers here, and one says that he does not like this one, and another says that he does not like the other, then, if you do not get a blessing out of the service, who is to blame? “Two men went up into the temple to pray;” and if we go to the house of God, and seek to turn the whole of the worship into a prayer, we shall not come away without a blessing. The main object in all worship is that we get near to God, and do really pray to him.

Neither do I think that we should go to the house of God merely to get comforted and cheered. That is a very sweet result from hearing the Word; but it should not be our main object in going to hear it, we should meet together that we may draw near to God. If it be the Lord’s will not to comfort but to rebuke us, and if it be his purpose not to cheer but to cast us down, we shall still feel, “What I received came from God. I prayed to him, and he spoke to me; and I had special fellowship with the living God, while I was also in communion with my brethren and sisters in Christ. That is what I went for, and that is what I have had.”

The publican teaches us what we should go to the house of God to do and to say. There should be, in God’s presence, confession of sin. We should each one of us, when we draw near to the Lord, bow down in his presence with reverent awe. If the very angels veil their faces when they come near him, we must humbly bow before him when we come to worship in his house. He is in heaven, and we are upon earth. He is our Father, but he is also our Father who is in heaven; and we poor sinful creatures can never come into the light of his presence without perceiving that we are full of sin. I have heard some people talk about “walking in the light as God is in the light,” as if that meant that they had no sin. Listen to what the apostle John says, “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another,” and then “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son” is still needed, for even then it “cleanseth us from all sin.” Without its continual application there would be no walking in the light; and the more walking in the light there is, the clearer will be the perception of every speck and stain in the character. So, the more true our worship is, the more certain shall we be to make confession of sin.

Communion with God and confession of sin should always be remembered by us when we come up to the house of God.

Then there should be asking for mercy. We should come as paupers seeking relief. We should come as rebels craving pardon. We should come as pardoned ones still asking renewed tokens of forgiveness; as men, once washed, who still come that their feet may be cleansed, that they may be clean every whit as they pursue their course on the journey of life.

In the publican’s prayer there is, in the Greek, a reference to sacrifice. He cried, “Lord, be propitious to me the sinner.” “Have mercy upon me for the sake of the great propitiation, the great expiation.” They who come up to God’s house on a right errand, come to find Jesus, to prove the power of his precious blood, to be perfumed with the incense of his all-sufficient merit, and to be covered with his matchless righteousness. That is the right way of coming up to the assembly of God’s people, to speak with him humbly, for we are sinful; prayerfully, for we are full of need; believingly, for Jesus has offered a sacrifice, and we are accepted in and through him.

That, dear friends, is the second division of my discourse, it is well to have an errand when we go up to public worship. I will just pause here, and pass a few questions round for everyone to ask, “Did I come to-night on any such an errand? Is that my general habit, to go up to my place of worship on such an errand? Or do I go jauntily, as if it were an ordinary transaction to go up for the worship of God?” I will not propose any answers to you; your own consciences will be able to give the reply. Only let them speak, and God bless the enquiry to you all!

Thirdly, it is possible to go up to public worship on a good errand, and yet to forget it: “Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.”

It was very remarkable that a Pharisee should forget his errand; that is the one point concerning him to which I am going to call your attention; he went up to the temple to pray, and he did not pray. He never prayed a word, but he did something else. If it had been written, “Two men went up into the temple to boast,” I should give the Pharisee the palm, for he certainly did that magniloquently; but as it is said, “Two men went up into the temple to pray,” then it is certain that this Pharisee quite forgot why he had come, for he never prayed at all.

Well, now, who was the gentleman that forgot his errand? It was the person who ought specially to have recollected it, for he was a Pharisee. By profession he was a separatist from others because of his supposed peculiar holiness. He was a man amazingly acquainted with the Word of God, at least, with the letter of it. He wore some little black boxes between his eyes with texts of Scripture inscribed upon them, and he wore others round his wrist; and he had very broad blue borders to his garments, for he was particularly observant of what he read in the law of Moses. And, generally, a Pharisee was a teacher; he was first cousin to a scribe, and often was a scribe himself. He had written out a copy of the law, and he had its precepts at his fingers’ ends. Now, surely, if there is anybody who goes up to the temple to pray, this is the man who will pray. If anybody forgets why he came, it will not be this person. But, listen. That was the very man who did forget all about it; and this may be true of a minister, a deacon, an elder, one of the brethren who prays at prayer-meetings, the leader of a Bible-class, a teacher in the Sunday-school, the best sort of people. “Oh!” you exclaim, “we cannot say anything but what is honourable of them;” and yet it was one of this class who forgot why he went up into the temple. Let me remind you church-members who make a loud profession, that it was a great professor who went up to the temple to pray, and did not do it. What would you say to your boy, who went to a shop, and then came home, and said that he had forgotten his errand? And what will you say to yourself, dear friend, especially if you happen to be somebody notable, if it should be you who went up to the temple to pray, and did not pray? Oh, do not let it be so in your case; do not to-night leave this house till you have had real fellowship with God, through Jesus Christ his Son, if you have never had it before!

How do we know that this man forgot his errand? We know it by what he said. He did not pray at all. He said, “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.” By his words he must be judged, as you and I will be; and his words go to prove that he forgot why he went up to the temple. He acted as though he was in his own house, praising himself, instead of being in God’s house, where the Lord alone is to be praised.

Why did this man fall into this great blunder, and forget why he went up to the temple? He did it because he was so full of himself that there was no room for God in his heart; he was so satisfied with himself that he felt no need of prayer. He already had all that he required, and he had so much that he could only stand still, and overflow with a kind of gratitude to the one to whom he owed everything, namely, himself. Though he said, “God, I thank thee,” he did not mean it; he meant all the praise for himself. He was so fine a bird, and had such rich feathers, that he felt that everybody ought to admire him as much as he admired himself.

Well now, brother Christians, you will say to me, “Has this any bearing upon us?” Listen. Do you never feel perfectly satisfied with yourselves? Are there not times when there is no sin that burns the conscience, when you think that you are somebody, a pattern saint, a highly experienced good old man, a rare Christian matron, and so on? The devil tells you all that, does he not? And you believe him. Or else you say that you are such a smart young man; you have only lately joined the church, yet you have already got into the Lord’s work in a wonderful way, there must be a great deal in you. You do not put this boasting into English, because we do not talk English to our hearts when we get proud; it is a sort of Greek which we talk, by which we try to conceal our own meaning from ourselves. Then we feel, perhaps, that we are getting perfect; that is the time when we forget to pray, and we go into the house of God, and, when we come out, we make some remark about the preacher’s manner, or about Sister So-and-so, whose bonnet is really too smart for a Christian woman to wear, or about our friend So-and-so, who spoke rather roughly to us. We,-we,-we,-we are so good that we can find fault with all others, and say, “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, or even as this publican;” and then we do not pray.

Whenever you get one inch above the ground in your own esteem, you are that inch too high. The way to heaven is down, down, down. As to self, it must sink; our sense of sin must grow deeper and deeper, and a sense of obligation to grace must be more and more fully impressed upon our heart, until we are able to say with great emphasis, though it be in the deep silence of the soul, “God be merciful to me the sinner!” Otherwise, we shall come to the temple on the errand of prayer, and we shall forget it; we shall go to the closet to pray, and yet shall not pray; or we shall read the Bible, and not find anything upon which to feed our souls, because we are not hungry, but full. We shall not seek true wealth, because we shall fancy we are not poor, but rich; we shall not go to the source of all might, because we shall imagine we are not weak, but strong. If we go up to the temple as the Pharisee did, there will be nothing for us even in the place where prayer is wont to be made.

So I close this discourse with a fourth observation. It is possible to carry out our errand in going up to public worship. We can go up to the temple to pray, and really pray.

Who is the man who is most likely to pray? According to this parable, it was the publican. It was a man under a sense of sin. It was a man who felt that he was the sinner, even if nobody else was a sinner. It was this man, to whom sin was a reality, not a fiction, and to whom the mercy of God was a real need, and not a mere doctrine, who craved that mercy at the throne, and felt that only sovereign grace could give it. It was this man who pleaded the precious blood of the propitiation, and felt that only by that way could he receive pardon. That was the man who truly prayed. Oh, have I not sometimes gone to pray with a breaking heart, groaning, and crying, and longing to see my Lord’s face, and to have a sense of acceptance in the Beloved; and I have come away, and felt that I had not prayed because I could not use language and words such as I would wish to use; and yet, on looking back, I have seen that it was then that I prayed most?

Next to the sense of sin, the publican had a sense of need. When the need is felt the heaviest, prayer is truest. When the soul is lowest, then the flood of supplication is the highest. I am sure you pray best when you have least satisfaction with yourself, and you get nearest to God when you get farthest from self. When you feel that you are not worthy to lift up your eyes to heaven, it is then that heaven’s eyes look down on you. The sorrowful thought of a broken heart is immeasurably better than the indifference of a callous spirit. Bless God for a humble mind that trembles at his Word; it is much better than that presumption which puts aside all feeling. There are some who will go to heaven questioning their own state all the way, yet they will arrive there safely; and there are some who never doubted of their state, who may have to doubt it when it is too late. Anyhow, it is a deep sense of sin, a deep sense of need, a deep sense of dependence upon sovereign grace, that helps a man to come to the house of God, and to go away with his errand well done.

Let us all try to bring our needs before God, let us sink ourselves in his presence into the very depths, and then let us come and joyfully take what he freely offers to all who trust his dear Son. Let us receive grace at his hands, not as courtiers who have a right, but as those who feel like dogs under the table, and yet cry, “Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.”

The publican excites our pity, as we hear his groans and sighs, and see him smite upon his breast; but when we know that this is the man whom God blessed, and that he went to his house justified rather than the other, we no longer pity him, but we seek to emulate his repentance and his grace, and we pray the Lord to help us thus to come to his feast with a hearty appetite, thus to come to his wardrobe conscious of our own rags, thus to come to his fulness admitting our own emptiness, thus to come to the fountain of eternal life feeling that apart from it we are dead. Then shall we truly pray, even as this despised publican did.

Poor soul, almost in despair, you think, “I have no right to be here; I am so guilty, I am so vile.” You are the very sort of sinner Christ died to save; not sham sinners, who have to pretend to be sinners, but you miserable sinners, you real sinners; not you who make marks on your skin, like some beggars do, that you may seem to be wounded; but you who are as bad as you can be, you who have sinned so deeply that you feel as if you were already lost, you who lie at hell’s dark door, you who are dragged about by the hair of your head by the foul fiend of the pit, you who are in your own esteem the worst of all men. Come you to Christ to-night. Make way for them. Stand back, for these are the people he came to save. He has come “to seek and to save that which was lost.” Believe thou that Christ died to save thee, and thou art saved. Throw thyself on his atoning sacrifice, and it avails for thee at once. Glorify him by trusting him for your salvation. Let him be thy High Priest, and from first to last thy Saviour, and he is thine as surely as thou art a living man or woman. Go thy way justified rather than the other who does not want the propitiation of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord bless you! Amen.

Expositions by C. H. Spurgeon

PSALM 122, and LUKE 18:1-14

We will read two portions of Scripture relating to public worship; the first will be Psalm 122., one of David’s “Songs of degrees.”

Psalm 122. Verse 1. I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.

“I was glad for my own sake, for I hungered and thirsted to go into the house of the Lord; I was glad for the sake of those who offered to go with me, for I delight to see in others a longing desire to profit by the means of grace; I was glad when they said unto me, ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord.’ ”

2, 3. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together:

So is every true church of God when it is in a healthy state. There are no divisions, no schisms: “Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together.” It is not a long straggling street, a dislocated village; but all the houses are rightly and regularly placed, and surrounded with strong munitions of defence against the adversary. May this church ever be blessed with such unity that it shall be as a city that is compact together!

4. Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord.

We should go up to the house of God, then, for two purposes, first, “unto the testimony of Israel;” that is, to hear what God testifies to us, and also publicly to testify our confidence in him; and, next, we should go up “to give thanks unto the name of the Lord.” Especially should we do this when we have been restored from beds of languishing sickness and pain, or when we come up from the house of mourning.

But what is there in God’s house that should tempt us to go there?

5. For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of David.

The preaching of the gospel is like the setting up of a throne of judgment, “for the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart;” and long before the last great judgment day arrives, and the final assize begins, the ministry of the gospel is God’s judgment seat, at which ungodly men may learn what they are in the sight of the Judge of all, what their present state of condemnation is, and what it will be finally unless they repent.

6. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:

Ask that she may be free from persecution without, and from anything like disturbance within: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”

6. They shall prosper that love thee.

Neglect of the means of grace is the death of all soul-prosperity; but an earnest love to the house of God, and all who belong to God, will bring us true spiritual prosperity.

7-9. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions’ sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee. Because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek thy good.

Now let us read a short passage out of the Gospel according to Luke.

Luke 18. Verses 1-7. And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint; saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: and there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying. Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said. Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?

He hears their prayer a long time because it does not weary him. It pleases him, he loves to hear their sighs and cries, but will he not yield to their entreaties? What think you? Shall not the good, gracious, loving God yield at length?

8. I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?

Faith enough to make such prayers as this; faith enough to pray with importunity? Oh, if we had faith enough to resolve to have a blessing, and determined never to cease crying to God until we had it, we should have far more favours than we have hitherto gained from our God.

9-12. And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

A fine peacock, truly! See how he spreads out his feathers, and struts before God, glorifying himself.

13. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

“The sinner,” it should be; it is so emphatically in the Greek. There is a Pharisee, the righteous man according to his own estimate, and all the rest were sinners. Here is the publican, he is the sinner, and he thinks everybody else is righteous. These were two very conspicuous individuals, the self-righteous man and the sinner; and they are both here to-night. I will not ask them to stand up; but no doubt they are both of them present. Now what became of them?

14. I tell you, this man-

The sinner-

14. Went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

It is God’s usual method to reverse what man does, and to turn things the other way upwards: “Everyone that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” You remember how the Virgin Mary, in her song, praised the Lord for this very habit of his: “He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.” That is his regular way of working, and he will continue so to do.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-122 (Song I.), 999, 607.

ETERNAL LIFE!

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, January 20th, 1895,

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Lord’s-day Evening, February 6th, 1887.

“This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”-John 17:3.

“We are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”-1 John 5:20, 21.

Our subject this morning* was concerning laying hold on eternal life; and I thought that I would say a little more to-night about eternal life. Many people, when they hear or read that expression, suppose that it means heaven; it does mean that, but it means much more. Eternal life commences here; it begins in the believer as soon as he is born again. Then he receives into him that same life which he will have throughout eternity. Eternal life is not a thing of changes; the river widens and deepens, as I showed you this morning, but it is ever the same river of the water of life; it always flows from the same source, it is always constituted in the same manner. The life of the new-born Christian, who only a few minutes ago began to pray, is precisely the same life which is to be found in yonder bright spirits, that have now been thousands of years in perfection at the right hand of God praising his name. Death does not transport believers into a new life; it simply rids us of certain impediments that hamper our true life in its upward flow. The life of the Christian here is the life triumphant that is to be enjoyed hereafter, it is one and the same life so far as its real nature is concerned.

It was the great end of the life, and death, and work of Christ to give this eternal life to all believers. He came into the world on purpose that they should for ever live through him. He has not accomplished his design in you, my hearer, unless he has made you live unto God. There is a Saviour; that you know, but he is not your Saviour unless he has infused into you a life infinitely superior to that which, was born in you at the first. “You must be born again,” and by that new birth you must receive a higher and diviner life than that which throbs in your bosom by nature. Judge for yourself whether Christ has come into the world to any purpose that affects you, and especially judge whether you have received eternal life at his hands. Remember how it is written, “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” The ever-living God is not the Father of dead souls; but he is the Father of those whom he has quickened; and the power to become sons of God lies, in a great measure, in the life which is divinely imparted to all who receive Christ, and believe on his name.

It is in the power of Christ to give this eternal life. In the verse preceding our first text, the Lord Jesus, addressing his Father, says of himself, “Thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.” The Father hath life in himself, and he quickens all who live; and even so the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, has life in himself, and this life he imparts to all who believe in him. It is in his power to bestow that life upon every soul that trusts him, and he delights in exercising his divine prerogative.

Our Lord Jesus bestows this eternal life only upon his elect. Speaking to his Father, in the verse I quoted just now, he says of himself, “Thou hast given him power over all flesh that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.” God has an elect people; so long as the Bible endures, there is no way of getting that doctrine out of it, unless men wilfully pervert its plainest teaching. From before the foundation of the world, the Lord chose a people unto himself, according to the sovereign purpose of his own will; even as he says, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” These people, whom God has chosen, are made known by their being quickened, in due time, into a higher and superior life to that of the flesh. Till then, they are, like the rest of mankind, dead as the dry bones of Ezekiel’s valley of vision; but the divine breath of the Eternal Spirit blows upon them, and they are made to live, and stand upon their feet, an exceeding great army. By this test can all of you know whether you are the subjects upon whom God’s grace has wrought. Is there a new life within your soul? Have you been raised from death unto life? Have you been made to feel new emotions, new desires, new longings, new pains, and new joys? For, if you have, then are you the people of God; but if not, I pray that in you also divine grace may yet be thus magnified.

The question for us now to consider is, wherein does this eternal life consist? I do not propose to answer the question, as it might be answered, in various ways, but only according to the first of our two texts: “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

First, then, eternal life consists in the knowledge of the only true God.

Let us think for a little while upon the want of this knowledge. The loss of this knowledge followed upon the Fall. As long as man knew his God, trusted his God, and obeyed his God, he was happy enough. But man must needs know the fallen spirit; and, once making acquaintance with him, man must needs know the knowledge of good and evil; and, contrary to the Lord’s command, he must take of the forbidden fruit, and eat. So he lost the knowledge of God, and with that loss he lost everything. The highest privilege of manhood is to be acquainted with God; and when our first father turned his back upon God, and began to unlearn whatever he had known of his Creator, and to forget all that had been revealed concerning his Lord, then came the Fall, and it was a fall indeed!

Out of this want of knowledge of God grew all manner of idolatries. Man must have a God; he cannot be happy without one. There are some who struggle hard before they yield; but, as surely as a dog must have a master, so surely man must have a God. There is a great superior Being, our Creator, Preserver, and Judge, whom we must have as our Redeemer, or else we are utterly undone. Without God, our nature is disabled and divided, its best part has run away; it becomes dead, in fact, when it becomes separated from God. It was the want of knowledge of the only true God that led men to bow down before blocks of wood and stone, to worship the sun, and moon, and stars, and to set up all manner of visible objects, and to say of them, “These be our gods.” Oh, to what terrible mischief, to what mental and spiritual death, the want of the knowledge of God has led the sons of men!

Nor is this all that the want of the knowledge of the true God has produced in us. It has spoiled the best aspirations of the noblest men, such as Plato and Socrates. Blindly feeling after God, yet without truly knowing him, what could they do? They could rise to no great height; they could accomplish but little. Men such as they were reared an altar, and inscribed thereon, “To the unknown god;” but what kind of prayer is that which is offered to a god whom we do not know? What comfort can come out of an unknown god? What peace, what rest, what joy, can come from a being after whom we grope in the dark, but whom we do not know? Not to know the only true God, is death, death even to the noblest spirits among us, much more terribly death to those who, knowing nothing of God, seek that which will please self, indulge their vile lusts, and follow their unbridled passions! What is all that, indeed, but the result of the fact that, not knowing God, they are seeking to submit themselves to some other lord? Man must have a master; he is like a horse that must have a rider. He is so constituted that, unless he yields himself to a power superior to himself, he grovels, and sinks down yet more and more until his condition is little better than that of the beasts that perish; indeed, in some respects, he is worse off even than they are.

I can scarcely picture what manhood would have been if we had never fallen; the chiefest joy, I think, would have been that each one among us would have had the only true God as ours. We should have been born into the world, whatever our circumstances, under the patronage of God. We should have gone forth to our labour, sweetly singing in the companionship of God. We should have retired to our rest at night,-supposing that things had been as they are now,-and we should have fallen asleep as in the embraces of our God, or on our Father’s breast. Days would have had a brightness about them superior to any the sun can yield, and nights would have had nothing for us to dread even in their densest darkness, for the Lord would still have been there. As a child is happy, and knows no care nor want while a good father provides for him everything he needs, such would man have been. Oh, miserable men who have not known their God! Unhappy men! Well may Scripture speak of them as dead, for it is death to be without the knowledge of God.

But, brethren, what is this knowledge of God which is eternal life? Let us talk a little about the meaning of this knowledge. It is not eternal life to know that there is a God. A great many people know as much as that, and still remain dead. Those who know not that there is a God are dead in the dark; and those who know that there is a God, and yet do not trust him, are dead in the light. That condition is, perhaps, the worse of the two; at any rate, it involves a greater responsibility. Yet, to know that there is a God is not the same thing as knowing God. I may know that there is a Queen of England, but I may not know her. I know that there are many persons in the world whom I do not know; and it is a sad thing for anyone to know that there is a God and yet not truly to know God.

To explain what is meant by knowing God, I must say, first, that it is to know him as God, that is to say, to know him as God to us. I have already told you that everybody has something that is god to him, something that is superior to himself, and which overrules him, something to which he looks up, and which he worships. Now, the great invisible Jehovah, the one God that made heaven and earth, in whose hand our breath is, who has revealed himself in the trinity of his divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of the whole earth, must be God to us. That means, that we reverence him, that we bow before him as worshippers, that we submit ourselves to his law, that we seek to do his pleasure. No man really knows God who does not know him as God, and does not accept him as his God; and to accept God as your God, is eternal life. This is how eternal life becomes yours; and if you have come to that point, you have eternal life.

Still, that statement does not fully explain what it is to know God; it is, to be on terms of personal acquaintance with him. The Lord is not to be seen, neither can his footfall be heard; but to know God is to be conscious of his presence by an inward sense which does both see and hear, to feel that he is everywhere, on the land or on the sea, and, knowing that he is there, to rejoice in being with him; in fact, to find great delight in this God who is not far from any one of us; to be (let me put it very plainly) on speaking terms with him, to be so reconciled to him that you have no dread of him, no bondage and fear when you think of him.

You then regard God as your best Friend, whom you love, and in whom you delight, to whom you talk as naturally as you talk to friend or father, into whose bosom you pour your griefs, into whose heart you tell your joys. God is nearer than your most familiar friend, nearer to you than eyes and ears, nearer to you than your own body, for he gets within your soul, which your body can never do. If you really know, experimentally, what I am talking about, you have eternal life. If this is so, that you know the only true God, distinctly recognizing his presence, speaking with him, and rejoicing in him, and if, above all, you are striving to be like him, if his Spirit in you is photographing the image of God upon your nature, so that the old image, which he gave to Adam, but which was effaced by sin, is being reproduced in you by the Holy Ghost, then you know the only true God; and this, dear friends, is eternal life.

Now, having shown you what the want of this knowledge produces, and the meaning of this knowledge, let me briefly speak of the connection between the knowledge of God and eternal life.

A man without God is a living man, of course, for he works, he eats, he drinks; yes, but he has missed the only true life, he has missed a secret happiness which is the very essence of life, and without which life is really death. You do not know it, dear hearer, if you have never believed in Christ, and I do not expect you to believe what I say; but let me tell you that there is a something that makes life worth living when you once come to know God. There is a secret bliss,-I cannot call it anything less than bliss,-there is a little heaven, a compendious, compressed, essential heaven, which God drops into that soul that lives with him, so that we know that which makes us leap for joy, and makes us bless God that ever we were created. If I had no God, I could say, “Cursed was the day in which it was said to my mother that a man-child was born into the world;” but now I thank God for my existence. Sometimes, when in great pain and anguish, yet having God with me, I have felt inclined not to curse the day of my birth, but to rejoice that I was ever born, even if I had to live a life of perpetual pain, seeing that I have a God who is indeed my own.

To have a God, also means that you have a grand object in life. Look at many of you, how you work hard from morning to night just to provide enough to keep body and soul together. If you have not a God, you are wretched creatures indeed; but the slave who tugs at the oar of the galley, and receives no pay but the cruel lash, is a happy and blessed man if God be with him. Many and many a Huguenot prisoner, condenmed for life to the galleys because of his faith, has been happier than the king upon his throne who thrust him there. With God, all conditions of life become life that is life indeed; but without him, there is nothing to live for. Here is a poor fellow, who lives till he has accumulated a million of money; it must be all the harder to die and leave so much, must it not? What is the good of it? To get a paragraph in The illustrated London News saying that So-and-so died worth so much? Oh, the misery of having existed for so small a result! But when you have a God, you have something to live for, something that makes every little thing sublime, and turns the commonest actions of daily life into a holy exercise of a royal priesthood unto the Most High.

The man who has a God also has the explanation of a great many things which puzzle other people, and he has something better still, for he has his God to fall back upon when he cannot explain anything. I like, sometimes, to have to pull up against a huge granite rock, and feel, “I never shall see through that rock; and I shall never see my way through that difficulty.” Well, I do not need to see my way through it. I do not want a tunnel from here to New Zealand; do you? I know that I cannot go through the very bowels of the earth, and I have no wish to do so. I am very glad to know that I cannot, by a stamp of my foot, force my way through to the other side of the globe; it would be a poor globe if I could. I would not worship a god that I could fully understand. I do not know how I should feel devout over a faith which I perfectly comprehended. If I could put my religion into my pocket, like a box of lozenges, I should soon suck it all away; but I like something that is grander than my loftiest thought, sublimer than my noblest conceptions, and which overtops me altogether. And I find it a blessed thing in life, when troubled with all these difficult problems of our teeming population and ever-present distress, to fall back upon this fact, “There is a God who will overrule it all, and from the seeming evil will produce a good, and from that good something better, to his own praise and glory.”

A man with a God,-you may strip him, but he is clothed in light. A man with a God,-you may shut him up in prison, but he is perfectly at liberty, for his spirit soars into the immensities. A man with a God,-he may be afflicted with a hundred diseases at once, but he has the best of all health, even the sanity of his soul. A man with a God has a window to his room; a man without a God goes round, and round, and round, and looks, but does not see anything at all. Sometimes he thinks, “I wish that I could see something, but there is nothing to be seen.” To those who are without a God, the future is all a blank; they call themselves “agnostics”; that is, men who do not know anything. But you who have a God look for eternal life in his presence. If men talk to you of joy, you say, “Oh, yes, there must be joy to one who is at peace with God; it cannot be that any man, who loves God, and is reconciled to him, should be perpetually unhappy!” That cannot be; so that, in knowing God, there springs up in the man’s heart a hope, nay, an assurance that it must be well with his soul, and that, though heaven and earth should pass away, God’s Word can never pass away, and therefore the safety of the man who clings to that Word must be secured. Yes, to know the only true God is to get where life is life, to get into eternal life;-not mere existence, but into that which is worthy to be called life indeed.

Now, dear brethren, in the second place, notice that eternal life also consists in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, whom God has sent: “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

Our second text shows that the first one by no means implies that Jesus Christ is not God, for it expressly declares, concerning Jesus Christ, “This is the true God, and eternal life.” This is the teaching of both passages. It would not be eternal life to know God apart from Christ. God the Father, apart from Jesus Christ, is just an Almighty Being infinitely just, whose laws I have violated, a Being infinitely loving, who would bless me, but who cannot do so while I violate his laws, a God full of tremendous power and unerring wisdom, who would exercise all these for me but that I, having broken his law, the penalties of that law are inevitable, and cannot be reversed. It was wise and just on God’s part to append a penalty to sin; nothing could be more cruel than to allow men to sin without being punished for it. It would be abhorrent to a God of love as much as to a God of justice if sin could be made a trifle, and there were no punishment attached to it. The first knowledge you and I ever get of God, when we come to know him, is as one who is infinitely loving, but who nevertheless, nay, who for that very reason, is infinitely just, and must punish sin.

No one does know the true God in the real sense of knowledge except through Jesus Christ, for no man cometh unto the Father but by the Son; but even if he could know God, in a measure, apart from the revelation of him in Christ Jesus, it would be a knowledge of terror that would make him flee away, and avoid God. It would not be life to our souls to know God apart from his Son, Jesus Christ. We must know the Christ whom he has sent, or our knowledge does not bring eternal life to us. But, beloved, when we see God in Christ meeting us, demanding a penalty and yet providing it himself, decreeing the punishment most justly and then bearing it himself, when we see him to be both Judge and expiation, both Ruler and sacrifice, then we see that “herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Then it is, in the knowledge of God in Christ and God through Christ, that we find that we have entered into eternal life.

Let me here add that it would not be eternal life to know Jesus Christ, if he were not God; if, as some say, he was only a good man. That he was only a good man, is impossible; for he was the worst of impostors if he was not God, for he spoke of himself as God, and if he was not divine, then he imposed on men. If he were nothing but a mere man, how could he give us eternal life? And of what avail were trust in him? But if he who bled on Calvary was very God of very God, as well as man, then the sacrifice he offered has an infinite value about it, and I, even I, dare trust my soul to him with the full assurance that there must be, in such a Saviour, ability to save to the uttermost all them that come unto God by him.

How do we come to know Christ? I do not think it necessary at this time to explain much about how we know Christ, because I am addressing thousands of persons who do know him. Brothers and sisters, you know Christ in the glory of his divine person, God and man. You have no doubts about either his deity or his humanity; you have tasted of the sympathy that comes to you through his manhood, and you have felt the majesty of his Godhead. He is to you your Brother and yet your God. You know him, then, in the glory of his person.

You also know him in the peace-speaking power of his precious blood. This is to me the best evidence of the truth of our holy religion. I was once troubled and tossed to and fro, driven almost to despair under a sense of sin; and it was only when I understood Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice, and realized that he stood in my stead, and bore my sin in his own body on the tree, that I obtained peace with God. I know the power of his blood by the peace it brought me; do not many of you know it also? I am sure that many of you do. Whenever sin returns to assail you, and you get troubled and perplexed, do you not go and look again to Christ upon the cross, and all your anxiety disappears? The wounds of Jesus bleed a balsam that heals your wounds, and his death yields the life that delivers you from going down to death.

We know Christ also in the perfection of his righteousness. By faith, we have put on that glorious robe, and we have gone in unto God with our Brother’s garments on; and the Lord has accepted us for his sake, and we have come from the divine presence exceedingly comforted and blest, “accepted in the Beloved.” We know, dear friends, now, what communion with God means; I have never seen him, but I know him better than anybody I ever saw. I have never heard his voice, nor do I expect to hear it till these ears be deaf in the grave, unless the Lord should come suddenly first; but I know his voice better than I know the voice of anyone on earth, I can discern it in a moment. A stranger will I not follow, for I know not the voice of strangers; but if there be any truth uttered, I know that truth by a kind of instinct within my soul. The charm of it is that Jesus has spoken it, and it commands my immediate loyal acceptance. Question anything Christ has said? Brethren, if I find Christ contradicting everything that I ever thought of, or any decision I had arrived at, I would, without regret, fling every thought in my mind to the winds, but I would embrace each syllable that he has spoken with a joy most intense, and a loyalty that never questions.

I have heard of “life in London.” I do not know much about what that expression means; but I know what life in Christ is, and there is nothing like it. Life in heaven is only life in Christ; if he were gone from the realms of bliss, there would be no life in heaven itself; but the centre, the core, the soul of the everlasting joy of the redeemed lies in the fact of Christ being with them, and their knowing him. This is life eternal, to know Jesus Christ whom God has sent, and to know God in him.

This will give you life, ye daughters of despair, who are at death’s dark door; know God and Christ, and you shall live! This will give you life, ye disappointed ones, to whom life seems to be like a sucked orange, which you would fain throw away! This will fill the cup of life again, and put into it the nectar of true life. This will give you something to trust in, this will give you rest to your spirit, this will give you power for service, this will give you a holy expectancy for the world to come; in fact, everything that life means comes to the man who knows God, and knows Christ; and everything that death means comes to the man who does not know God, and does not know Christ; he is dead even while he continues to exist.

I have finished my discourse all but one fragment. Did you notice the last clause in our second text? “This is the true God, and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” Do you see the drift of the apostle’s injunction? You live by the true God, you live by Jesus Christ; therefore, keep yourselves from idols. Idols are untrue gods, and they are death to you; therefore, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”

Of course, I need not say to you that we must carefully preserve our integrity in the matter of worshipping anything that can be seen. No child of God may dare to worship a picture, an image, or anything that is visible. I would like to break out of every church window every image of the saints, lest it should be worshipped; and especially to banish from all public observation every symbol and sign that ever has been worshipped in the church of Rome, lest it should be worshipped again. I see, in the symbolism of certain churches, a tendency to set up something visible as an object of worship. Remember the commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” that is, have nothing to worship but God; and then, next, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.” The worship of the cross, the crucifix, the “consecrated” bread, or anything of that kind, is sheer idolatry, and it always brings death with it. Out dies gospel light when anything but the true God is worshipped. Away with idols, therefore; have a holy iconoclastic zeal against anything that is regarded by men with the reverence which is due to God alone.

But keep yourselves from all other idols; from the idols of your own brain, from creeds of your own making, from thoughts of your own imagining. Keep yourselves from letting anything but God rule you. Keep yourselves from golden idols; keep yourselves from the love of fame; keep yourselves from the adoration of human science: “Keep yourselves from idols.” There is no God but God, and Christ Jesus his Son is the only Mediator between God and men. Keep yourselves from allowing anything but God to get the upper hand of you; make not gods of yourselves, your own persons; make not gods of your families, make not gods of your children. Verily, I say unto you, there are many who worship their children, and set them up as little gods; and when they are taken away from them, as they will be when they worship them, then they cry out against God most bitterly. How could they think that God would allow the little Dagons to be set up in his place? It must be God first, God last, God midst, and God without end. May he make it so with us that, henceforth, we shall have this eternal life, which consists in knowing the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

PSALM 27

Verse 1. The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?

If all your light comes from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning, you need not be afraid of losing your light. “The Lord is my light and my salvation.” If your salvation comes from the God of salvation, if it is wrought out by the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, you need not be afraid that you will ever be robbed of that salvation, and you may confidently sing, “Jehovah is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?”

1. The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

“He puts his own force into me; and if he who is omnipotent is the strength of my life, who can stand against me? If my strength were in myself, I might well be afraid; but if it be in God alone, if ‘the Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?’ ” Dismiss your fears, then, whatever may be the cause of them, all ye who are trusting in the Lord Jehovah. The causes of fear are many; but the cure of fear is one, namely, faith in the living God.

2. When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.

This is the record of the psalmist’s past experience. David was a soldier, and he had a soldier’s dangers and a soldier’s deliverances; and here he writes the history of his battles. These are despatches from the field. When the psalmist’s enemies rushed upon him, like hungry lions, seeking to eat him up, they stumbled and fell; he had not to fight, or even to sound a trumpet, for the Lord fought for him.

3. Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident.

The past gives him confidence both for the present and for the future. Happy is the man who can fall back upon his past experience, not to make of it a bed to lie upon, but to make of it a lever with which to lift his soul out of the slough of despond. I think I have sometimes said that we may use our past experiences as the bargemen use their oars when they push backward to drive the boat forward. You must never lie down upon past mercies, and say, “I am satisfied with all that has happened;” but use the past to help you in the present and the future.

4. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple.

David wanted to spend his days in the house of his God, and we also may do the same, not only in the place that is used for public worship, but wherever we may be. The great house of God is everywhere, and his children can always be at home with him. That is the ideal of a Christian’s life, to be always in God’s house,-

“No more a stranger or a guest,

But like a child at home.”

David desired not only that he might dwell in God’s house, but that he might spend his time in adoring contemplation of the beauty of his God: “to behold the beauty of the Lord.” Did you ever think of the wonderful beauties that there are in the character of the Most High? If you want to see them, behold him who is altogether lovely, in whom the Father is to be most clearly seen, though veiled in human flesh. This should also be our lifelong work, to study, to understand, and to enjoy the beauty of the Lord, “and to enquire in his temple;” not only to see him, but to speak with him, and to hear him speak. A Christian is one who makes enquiries of his God; he is an enquirer when he begins, and he should be an enquirer till he ends. The apostle Peter tells us that the angels belong to the honourable company of enquirers concerning “things that accompany salvation”: “Which things the angels desire to look into.” Christian men should go to God with their enquiries; and when they come to public worship, this should be one great end of it, “to enquire in his temple.”

5. For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion:

“For”-and this is a reason for dismissing all our fear,-“in the time of trouble he shall hide me.” “I am so little that I may easily be hidden away by one so great as God is. ‘He shall hide me in his pavilion,’ in his own royal tent; and beneath the majesty of his sovereignty my soul shall find perfect security.”

5. In the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me;

“In that most holy place, where none can come and live but those whom God brings there, in the sacred spot where the security must be absolute, in the tabernacle of sacrifice besprinkled with the blood of atonement, shall he hide me.” Oh, what a hiding-place is this for one who is in trouble!

5. He shall set me up upon a rock.

What perfect security the child of God has; first, in the pavilion of sovereignty; next, in the secrecy of sacrifice; and thirdly, on the rock of immutability! “He shall set me up upon a rock.”

6. And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me: therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord.

If an ungodly man’s head were lifted up above his enemies, he would begin to denounce them, and to curse them; but when a believer’s head is thus lifted up, he begins to praise his God. Then are his songs louder and sweeter than ever they were before; “I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord.”

7. Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me, and answer me.

I thought you were going to sing, David; but you are at prayer, I see. This is how we live spiritually; we breathe in the air by prayer, and we breathe it out by praise; this is the holy respiration of a Christian’s life. Prayer and praise must be mingled in a divinely-wise proportion, and then they make a sweet incense, acceptable to God. I hope we can say that we have never done praying but that we feel we must begin singing, and that we have never done singing but that we must begin praying. What a blessed interchange this makes for the whole of life! “I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord. Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me, and answer me.”

8. When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.

The child of God knows his Father’s voice, and responds to it. God’s Word is like a seal, and we should be like the wax, ready to take the impress of it. “Seek ye my face.” “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.” It is the same expression reversed, just as it is when the seal makes an impression.

9. Hide not thy face far from me;

I do not know why the translators put in that word “far.” It is printed in italics, but it should not be there at all. “Hide not thy face from me at all, my Lord. I do not ask thee not to hide it far from me, but I pray thee not to hide it at all. Make no break in my sunlight. Let me always see thee; this is all I ask. Hide not thy face from me.”

9. Put not thy servant away in anger:

“Put not thy servant away.” God will not put away his children; but he does sometimes put his servants away. I know that this is often a prayer of mine, I wonder whether it is yours also,-

“Dismiss me not thy service, Lord.”

We may remain his children, and yet we may scarcely be fit to be employed any longer in his service. Let this be your prayer as well as David’s, “Put not thy servant away in anger.”

9. Thou hast been my help;

“Ay, that thou hast, O Lord! Thou hast been my help.”

9, 10. Leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation. When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.

There is a poor child, and his father and mother have both gone away and left him; but the Divine Father comes along, picks the child up, and clasps him to his bosom: “Then the Lord will take me up.” It is a wonderful thing to be taken up by God. A man prospers in business, and people say, “Oh, yes, he may very well get on, for such and such a great man has taken him up!” But how much better shall you and I prosper who can say, “The Lord will take me up”! If he has taken us up, what a wonderful Patron we have! There is no other like the Lord.

11. Teach me thy way, O Lord,

“I am only a child; teach me, Lord. I am fatherless and motherless; take me into thine orphanage, and teach me thy way, O Lord!”

11. And lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies.

“Make my way to be very straightforward! May my life be such that I never have to apologize for it! May there be no places in it about which unpleasant questions can be asked! ‘Lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies.’ If they can find fault with me, they will do so; and if they cannot rightly find fault with me, they will make up some accusation against me, therefore, O Lord, ‘lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies.’ ”

12, 13. Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty. I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Men say that “seeing is believing,” but that is not true; but believing is seeing. So David says, “I had fainted, unless I had believed to see.” It is by believing that we see “the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”

14. Wait on the Lord:

I think I hear David say this short sentence to each one in this great assembly to-night, “Wait on the Lord.”

14. Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say,

David says it from his own experience, and thus, as it were, puts his name and seal at the end of the Psalm: “Wait, I say,”-

14. On the Lord.

Everyone who has ever proved the power of prayer may use the same words as David did; the preacher certainly does so, and with the psalmist he exclaims, “Wait, I say, on the Lord.”

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-l94, 804, 410.