Sermon XIX. God the saints’ rock.1
“From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” — Ps. lxi. 2.
There are two things in the words:— First, The state wherein the psalmist was. Secondly, The course that he steered in that state.
His estate is doubly expressed:— 1. From the place where he was, — “From the end of the earth;” and, 2. From the condition he was in, — “His heart was overwhelmed.”
And in the course he steered there are two things also:— 1. The manner of it, — “He cried unto the Lord.” 2. The matter of that cry, — “Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”
First. There is the state wherein he was. And, —
1. The first description of it (for both parts are metaphorical) is from the place where he was, — “The end of the earth.” Now, this may be taken two ways:— either naturally, and then it is an allusion to men that are far distant and remote from help, relief, and comfort; or, as I may say, ecclesiastically, with reference to the temple of God, which was “in medio terræ,” — “in the midst and heart of the land,” where God manifested and gave tokens of his gracious presence and favour: as if he had said, “I am at the end of the earth; far from any tokens, pledges, or manifestations of the love and favour of God, as well as from outward help and assistance.”
2. The second description of his state is, that “his heart was overwhelmed.” Wherein we have two things:—
(1.) A confluence of calamities and distresses. (2.) The effect they had upon him; — his heart was overwhelmed, and fainted under them. As long as the heart will hold up, they may be borne, — “The spirit of a man will bear his infirmity;” but when “the spirit is wounded,” and the heart faints, a confluence of calamities greatly oppresses.
What is meant by “overwhelmed,” himself declares in another place, Ps. cii. The title of the psalm is, “A prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed.” And he describes that condition in the psalm itself, verses 3, 4, etc., “My days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth. My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread. By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin. I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house-top. Mine enemies reproach me all the day; and they that are mad against me are sworn against me. For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping, because of thine indignation and thy wrath: for thou hast lifted me up, and cast me down.” To be overwhelmed, is to be under a confluence of all manner of distressing calamities. Ps. cxlii. 3, 4, he describes again what it is to be overwhelmed: “When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.” So that to have a confluence of manifold distresses, with an eye to the indignation of God as the spring of those distresses, until the spirit sink and faint under it, is to have the heart overwhelmed. This is his state and condition.
Secondly. The course he takes in this state, as we have already observed, is also doubly expressed:—
1. In the manner of it. “I cried,” saith he, “unto thee.” The word is frequently used in this case in Scripture; and it is naturally expressive of the principal actings of faith in a distressed condition.
There are four things that faith will do in a condition of distress in believers; and they are all of them comprised in this expression, “I cried:” —
(1.) It will make the heart sensible of the affliction. God abhors the proud and the stubborn, that think by their own spirits to bear up under their pressures. Isa. xlvi. 12, “Hearken unto me, ye stout-hearted, that are far from righteousness.” Persons that think to bear themselves up, when God dealeth with them, by their stout heart, are such whom, of all others, God most despises and abhors: they are “far from righteousness.” Now, crying doth include a sense of evils and pressures the soul is exercised withal, and that we do not despise God when we are chastened, as well as that we do not utterly faint, but cry unto the Lord.
(2.) The next act of faith is a holy complaint unto God in such a state and condition. So the psalmist tells us, Ps. cii., “A prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and poureth out his complaint before the Lord.” He often mentions “his complaint, coming with his complaint unto the Lord.” And God takes nothing more kindly than when we come to him with our complaints; not repining at them, but spreading them before the Lord, as from whom alone we expect relief: for it declares we believe God concerns himself in our state and condition. There is no man so foolish, whatsoever he suffers, as to go unto them with his complaints whom he supposes are not concerned in him, nor have any compassion for him. It is a professing unto God that we believe he is concerned in our condition, when we cry unto him, and pour out before him our complaints.