Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 879
Delivered on Sunday Morning, JULY 4, 1869, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“It is good for me to draw near to God.”- Psalm 73:28.
WHEN a man is sick, everybody knows what is good for him. They recommend remedies by the score—salts from the earth, herbs of the field, drugs from the east, minerals from the rock, extracts, compounds, cordials, concoctions, quintessences and I know not what besides—as many medicines as there are men—all these are cried up as good for our complaint. Amid such a Babel it is well for a man if he knows on his own account what is good for himself.
Certainly in spiritual things, whatever others may recommend, it is of the first importance in all our trials to know by personal experience for ourselves what is in the highest sense good for us. One of your friends may commend a course of vigorous action and another may bid you sit still. One may persuade you to contemplate your trial from its darkest side and another may call your attention solely to the brighter lights. But if you know, through having passed through the trial before, what is truly good in such a case, it will be best to take your stand upon it and not be led away by every “lo! here,” and “lo! there.”
The Psalmist, although he might have been surrounded by a thousand counselors, puts them all aside, and strong in the confidence which his experience gave him, he declares, “It is good for me to draw near to God.” It may seem good in the worldling’s eyes to go his way to his wine cups, and to make merry in dance. It may seem good to yonder truster in an arm of flesh to seek out his friends and his kinsmen and entrust his case to their discretion. It may seem good to the desponding to retire in melancholy to brood over his sorrows, and to the dissipated to endeavor to drown all care in vanity, but to me, says the Psalmist, it is good, pre-eminently good, that I should draw near unto God.
I. Now, in this statement, the Psalmist, first of all, TACITLY CONDEMNS OTHER COURSES OF ACTION. Take the text in connection with the Psalm of which it is the conclusion and you will see at once that he repents of a certain course of thought to which he had given way and the recoil from his error is the exclamation, “It is good for me to draw near to God.” It is as if he meant to say, “It is not good for me to do what I have done, it is infinitely better for me to draw near to God.”
We learn from this that it is not a good thing for us to try and fathom the mysteries of Providence. What have we to do with measuring the great depths of Providence? Is not this meddling with things too high for us? It should be enough for us to commit our boat to the Great Pilot, trusting all to Him who rules all—being well assured that He will bring His own beloved to their desired haven. We need not be curious to know the exact depth of all the deep places of the earth— it is enough that they are in His hands. Nor need the strength of the hills provoke our anxiety, for it is His, also. Yet such is the tendency of the human heart, that we crave to comprehend all things in the little hollow of our hand. We aspire to calculate the infinite and sum the total of the immeasurable. It is with us as though foolish children should determine to measure the great and wide sea and therefore should push off from the shore in a little boat to drift away, they know not where, in imminent hazard of their lives.
Theories upon predestination, followed up by speculations upon the facts of Providence—these are enough to drive men mad and are certain to drive them into wicked thoughts—unjust towards God and depressing towards themselves. Gotthold in his “Emblems” tells us of the adventures of his child. The father was one day sitting in his study and when he lifted his eyes from a book which had engrossed his attention, he saw standing upon the window ledge his little son. He was troubled and frightened to the last degree, for the child stood there in the utmost peril of falling to the ground and being dashed to pieces. The little one had always been anxious to know what his father was doing so many hours in the day in his study and he had at last, by a ladder, managed to climb with boyish daring till there he stood outside the window, gazing at his father with his little eyes.
“So,” said the father, as he took the child into his chamber and rebuked him for his folly, “So have I often tried to climb into the council chamber of God, to see why He did this and that. And thus have I exposed myself to peril of falling to my destruction.” My God, it is not good for me to pry into Your secrets with curiosity, but it is good for me to draw near unto You in sincerity.
In connection with this Psalm we may also learn that it is not good for us, under any circumstances, to get very far from God. The verse that precedes the text runs thus—“They that are far from You shall perish.” Now, the tendency of repeated affliction, is, in the carnal mind, to drive us away from God. “Surely He deals harshly with me,” says the sufferer. “No good has come to me since I began to attend a place of worship and to become religious. Evil after evil has happened to me in connection with my profession of godliness.” Because of this the ungodly man, who was a formalist in his religion, gives it all up. “It were better,” says he, “that I should find what pleasure I can in sin since I can find none in godliness.”