Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 513
Psalm 90:14.
ISRAEL had suffered a long night of affliction. Dense was the darkness while they abode in Egypt, and cheerless was the glimmering twilight of that wilderness which was covered with their graves. Amidst a thousand miracles of mercy, what must have been the sorrows of a camp in which every stop was marked with many burials—until the whole trail was a long cemetery? I suppose that the deaths in the camp of Israel was never less than fifty each day—if not three times that number—so that they learned experimentally that verse of the Psalm, “For we are consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath are we troubled.”
Theirs was the weary march of men who wander about in search of tombs. They traveled towards a land which they could never reach, weary with a work the result of which only their children should receive. You may easily understand how these troubled ones longed for the time when the true day of Israel should dawn, when the black midnight of Egypt, and the dark twilight of the wilderness should both give way to the rising sun of the settled rest in Canaan. Most fitly was the prayer offered by Moses—the representative man of all that host—“O satisfy us early with Your mercy.” Hasten the time when we shall come to our promised rest. Bring on speedily the season when we shall sit under own vine and our own fig tree, “and shall rejoice and be glad all our days.”
This prayer falls from the lips of yonder Brother, whose rough pathway for many a mile has descended into the Valley of Death. Loss after loss has he experienced, till as in Job’s case, the messengers of evil have trod upon one another’s heels. His griefs are new every morning, and his trials fresh every evening. Friends forsake him and prove to be deceitful brooks. God breaks him with a tempest. He finds no pause in the ceaseless shower of his troubles. Nevertheless, his hope is not extinguished, and his constant faith lays hold upon the promise, that, “weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” He understands that God will not always chide, neither does He keep His anger forever.
Therefore he watches for deliverance even as they that watch for the morning, and his most appropriate cry is, “O satisfy us early with Your mercy. Lift up the light of Your countenance upon us. Show Your marvelous loving kindness in this present hour of need. O my God, make haste to help me, be a very present help in time of trouble. Fly to my relief lest I perish from the land. Awake for my rescue, that I may rejoice and be glad all my days.”
See yonder sick bed! Tread lightly, lest perchance you disturb the brief slumbers of that daughter of affliction. She has tossed to and fro days and nights without number, counting her minutes by her pains, and numbering her hours with the attacks of her agony. From that couch of suffering where many diseases have conspired to torment the frail body of this child of woe, where the soul itself has grown weary of life, and longs for the wings of a dove, methinks this prayer may well arise, “O satisfy us early with Your mercy.” “When will the eternal day break upon my long night? When will the shadows flee away? Sweet Sun of Glory! When will You rise with healing beneath Your wings? I shall be satisfied when I wake up in Your likeness, O Lord. Hasten that joyful hour. Give me a speedy deliverance from my bed of weakness, that I may rejoice and be glad throughout eternal days.”
Methinks the prayer would be equally appropriate from many a distressed conscience where conviction of sin has rolled heavily over the soul till the bones are sore vexed, and the spirit is overwhelmed. That poor heart indulges the hope that Jesus Christ will one day comfort it, and become its salvation—it has a humble hope that these wounds will not last forever but shall all be healed by Mercy’s hand. That He who looses the bands of Orion will one day deliver the prisoner out of his captivity. Oh, conscience-stricken Sinner, you may on your knees now cry out—“O satisfy me early with Your mercy! Keep me not always in this house of bondage. Let me not plunge forever in this slough of despair. Set my feet upon a rock, wash me from my iniquities. Clothe me with garments of salvation and put the new song into my mouth, that I may rejoice and be glad all my days.”
Still, it appears to me that without straining so much as one word even in the slightest degree, I may take my text this morning as the prayer of a young heart, expressing its desire for present salvation. To you, young men and maidens, shall I address myself. And may the good Spirit cause you in the days of your youth to remember your Creator, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw near when you shall say, we have no pleasure in them. I hope the angel of the Lord has said unto me, “Run, speak to that young man,” and that like the good housewife in the Proverbs, I shall have a portion also for the maidens!
I shall use the text in two ways, first, as the ground of my address to the young. And then, secondly, as a model for your address to God.