Bible Heaven/Bible Heaven.iso/spurgeon/ps10.16

Text File | 1993-03-21 | 12KB | 219 lines

                           EXPOSITION.

        The Psalm ends with a song of thanksgiving to the great
and everlasting King, because he has granted the desire of his
humble and oppressed people, has defended the fatherless, and
punished the heathen who trampled upon his poor and afflicted
children. Let us learn that we are sure to speed well, if we
carry our complaint to the King of kings. Rights will be
vindicated, and wrongs redressed, at his throne. His government
neglects not the interests of the needy, nor does it tolerate
oppression in the mighty. Great God, we leave ourselves in thine
hand; to thee we commit thy church afresh. Arise, O God, and let
the man of the earth--the creature of a day--be broken before the
majesty of thy power. Come, Lord Jesus, and glorify thy people.
Amen and Amen.

              EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS.

        Verse 16.--"_The Lord is King for ever and ever: the
heathen are perished out of his land_." Such confidence and faith
must appear to the world strange and unaccountable. It is like
what his fellow citizens may be supposed to have felt (if the
story be true) toward that man of whom it is recorded, that his
powers of vision were so extraordinary, that he could distinctly
see the fleet of the Carthaginians entering the harbour of
Carthage, while he stood himself at Lilyboeum, in Sicily. A man
seeing across an ocean, and able to tell of objects so far off!
he could feast his vision on what others saw not. Even thus does
faith now stand at its Lilyboeum, and see the long tossed fleet
entering safely the desired haven, enjoying the bliss of that
still distant day, as if it was already come.--^Andrew A. Bonar.

        Verse 17.--There is a humbling act of faith put forth in
prayer. Others style it praying in humility; give me leave to
style it praying in faith. In faith which sets the soul in the
presence of that mighty God, and by the sight of him, which faith
gives us, it is that we see our own vileness, sinfulness, and
abhor ourselves, and profess ourselves unworthy of any, much less
of those mercies we are to seek for. Thus the sight of God had
wrought in the prophet (#Isa 6:5|), "Then said I, Woe is me! for
I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips: for mine eyes
have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." And holy Job speaks thus
(#Job 42:5,6|), "Now mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor
myself, and repent in dust and ashes." This is as great a
requisite to prayer as any other act; I may say of it alone, as
the apostle (#Jas 1:7|), that without it we shall receive nothing
at the hands of God! God loves to fill empty vessels, he looks to
broken hearts. In the Psalms how often do we read that God hears
the prayers of the humble; which always involves and includes
faith in it. #Ps 9:12|, "He forgetteth not the cry of the
humble," and #Ps 10:17|, "_Lord thou hast heard the desire of the
humble: thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear
to hear_." To be deeply humbled is to have the heart prepared and
fitted for God to hear the prayer; and therefore you find the
Psalmist pleading _sub forma pauperis_, often repeating, "I am
poor and needy." And this prevents our thinking much if God do
not grant the particular thing we do desire. Thus also Christ
himself in his great distress (#Ps 22|), doth treat God (verse
#Ps 22:2|), "O my God, I cry in the day-time, but thou hearest
not; and in the night season am not silent. Our fathers trusted
in thee. They cried unto thee, and were delivered. But I am a
worm, and no man; reproached of men, and despised of the people;"
(verse #Ps 22:6|) "and he was heard in the end in what he
feared." And these deep humblings of ourselves, being joined with
vehement implorations upon the mercy of God to obtain, is
reckoned into the account of praying by faith, both by God and
Christ. #Mt 8|.--^Thomas Goodwin.

        Verse 17.--"_Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the
humble_." A spiritual prayer is a _humble_ prayer. Prayer is the
asking of an alms, which requires humility. "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." #Lu 18:13|. God's incomprehensible glory may even
amaze us and strike a holy consternation into us when we approach
nigh unto him: "O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my
face to thee." #Ezr 9:6|. It is comely to see a poor nothing lie
prostrate at the feet of its Maker. "Behold now, I have taken
upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes." #Ge
18:27|. The lower the heart descends, the higher the prayer
ascends.--^Thomas Watson.

        Verse 17.--"_Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the
humble_," etc. How pleasant is it, that these benefits, which are
of so great a value both on their own account, and that of the
divine benignity from whence they come, should be delivered into
our hands, marked, as it were, with this grateful inscription,
_that they have been obtained by prayer_!--^Robert Leighton.

        Verse 17.--"_The desire of the humble_." Prayer is the
offering up of our desires to God in the name of Christ, for such
things as are agreeable to his will. It is an offering of our
desires. Desires are the soul and life of prayer; words are but
the body; now as the body without the soul is dead, so are
prayers unless they are animated with our desires: "_Lord, thou
hast heard the desire of the humble_." God heareth not words, but
_desires_.--^Thomas Watson.

        Verse 17.--God's choice acquaintances are humble
men.--^Robert Leighton.

        Verse 17.--He that sits nearest the dust, sits nearest
heaven.--^Andrew Gray, of Glasgow, 1616.

        Verse 17.--There is a kind of omnipotency in prayer, as
having an interest and prevalency with God's omnipotency. It hath
loosed iron chains (#Ac 16:25,26|); it hath opened iron gates,
(#Ac 12:5-10|); it hath unlocked the windows of heaven (#1Ki
18:41|); it hath broken the bars of death (#Joh 11:40,43|). Satan
hath three titles given in the Scriptures, setting forth his
malignity against the church of God: a dragon, to note his
malice; a serpent, to note his subtlety; and a lion, to note his
strength. But none of all these can stand before prayer. The
greatest malice of Haman sinks under the prayer of Esther; the
deepest policy, the counsel of Ahithophel, withers before the
prayer of David; the largest army, a host of a thousand
Ethiopians, run away like cowards before the prayer of
Asa.--^Edward Reynolds, 1599-1676.

        Verse 18.--"_To judge the fatherless and the oppressed_,"
etc. The tears of the poor fall down upon their cheeks, _et
ascendunt ad coelum_, and go up to heaven and cry for vengeance
before God, the judge of widows, the father of widows and
orphans. Poor people be oppressed even by laws. Woe worth to them
that make evil laws against the poor, what shall be to them that
hinder and mar good laws? What will ye do in the day of great
vengeance when God shall visit you? he saith he will hear the
tears of the poor woman, when he goeth on visitation. For their
sake he will hurt the judge, be he never so high, he will for
widows' sakes change realms, bring them into temptation, pluck
his judges' skins over their heads. Cambyses was a great emperor,
such another as our master is, he had many lord deputies, lord
presidents, and lieutenants under him. It is a great while ago
since I read the history. It chanced he had under him in one of
his dominions a briber, a gift-taker, a gratifier of rich men; he
followed gifts as fast as he that followed the pudding; a
handmaker in his office, to make his son a great man, as the old
saying is "Happy is the child whose father goeth to the devil."
The cry of the poor widow came to the emperor's ear, and caused
him to slay the judge quick, and laid his skin in his chair of
judgment, that all judges that should give judgment afterward,
should sit in the same skin. Surely it was a goodly sign, a
goodly monument, the sign of the judge's skin. I pray God we may
once see the sign of the skin in England. Ye will say,
peradventure, that this is cruelly and uncharitably spoken. No,
no; I do it charitably, for a love I bear to my country. God
saith, "I will visit." God hath two visitations; the first is
when he revealeth his word by preachers; and where the first is
accepted, the second cometh not. The second visitation is
vengeance. He went to visitation when he brought the judge's skin
over his ears. If this word be despised, he cometh with the
second visitation with vengeance.--^Hugh Latimer, 1480-1555.

        Verse 18.--"_Man of the earth_," etc. In the eighth Psalm
(which is a circular Psalm ending as it did begin, "O Lord our
God, how excellent is thy name in all the world!" That
whithersoever we turn our eyes, upwards or downwards, we may see
ourselves beset with his glory round about), how doth the prophet
base and discountenance the nature and whole race of man; as may
appear by his disdainful and derogatory interrogation, "What is
man that thou art mindful of him; and the Son of Man, that thou
regardest him?" In the ninth Psalm, "Rise, Lord; let not man have
the upper hand; let the nations be judged in thy sight. Put them
in fear, O Lord, that the heathen may know themselves to be but
men." Further, in the tenth Psalm, "Thou judgest the fatherless
and the poor, that the man of the earth do no more violence."

        The Psalms, as they go in order, so, methinks they grow
in strength, and each hath a weightier force to throw down our
presumption. 1. We are "men," and the "sons of men," to show our
descent and propagation. 2. "Men in our own knowledge," to show
that conscience and experience of infirmity doth convict us. 3.
"Men of the earth," to show our orginal matter whereof we are
framed. in the twenty-second Psalm, he addeth more disgrace; for
either in his own name, regarding the misery and contempt wherein
he was held, or in the person of Christ, whose figure he was, as
if it were a robbery for him to take upon him the nature of man,
he falleth to a lower style, _at ego sum vermis et non vir_; but
I am a worm, and no man. For as corruption is the father of all
flesh, so are the worms his brethren and sisters, according to
the old verse--

        "First man, next worms, then stench and loathsomeness,
        Thus man to no man alters by changes."

        Abraham, the father of the faithful (#Ge 18|), sifteth
himself into the coarsest man that can be, and resolveth his
nature into the elements whereof it first rose. "Behold I have
begun to speak to my Lord, being dust and ashes." And if any of
the children of Abraham, who succeed him in the faith, or any of
the children of Adam, who succeed him in the flesh, thinketh
otherwise, let him know that there is a threefold cord twisted by
the finger of God, that shall tie him to his first original,
though he contend till his heart break. "O earth, earth, earth,
hear the word of the Lord" (#Jer 22|); that is, earth by
creation, earth by continuance, earth by resolution. Thou camest
earth, thou remainest earth, and to earth thou must
return.--^John King.

        Verse 18.--"_The man of the earth_." Man dwelling in the
earth, and made of earth.--^Thomas Wilcocks.

                       HINTS TO PREACHERS.

        Verse 16.--The Eternal Kingship of Jehovah.

        Verse 17 (first clause).--I. The Christian's
character--"_humble_." II. An attribute of the Christian's whole
life--"_desire_:" he desires more holiness, communion, knowledge,
grace, and usefulness; and then he desires glory. III. The
Christian's great blessedness--"_Lord, thou hast heard the desire
of the humble_."

        Verse 17 (whole verse).--I. Consider the _nature_ of
gracious desires. II. Their origin. III. Their _result_. The
three sentences readily suggest these divisions, and the subject
may be very profitable.