Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 998
Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, July 2nd, 1871, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“But I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more.”—Psalm 71:14.
WHEN sin conquered the realm of manhood, it slew all the minstrels except those of the race of Hope. For humanity, amid all its sorrows and sins, hope sings on. To believers in Jesus there remains a royal race of bards, for we have a hope of glory, a lively hope, a hope eternal and divine. Because our hope abides, our praise continues—“I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee.” Because our hopes grow brighter, and are every day nearer and nearer to their fulfillment, therefore the volume of our praise increases. “I will hope continually, and yet praise thee more and more.” A dying hope would bring forth declining songs; as the expectations grew more dim, so would the music become more faint; but a hope immortal and eternal, flaming forth each day with intenser brightness, brings forth a song of praise which, as it shall always continue to arise, so shall it always gather new force. See well, my brethren, to your faith, and your faith and hope, for otherwise God will be robbed of his praise. It will be in proportion as you hope for the good things which he has promised to your faith, that you will render to him the praise which is his royal revenue, acceptable to him by Jesus Christ, and abundantly due from you.
David had not been slack in praise: indeed, he was a sweet singer in Israel, a very choir-master unto the Lord yet he vowed to praise him more and more. Those who do much already, are usually the people who can do more. He was old. Would he praise God more when he was infirm than he had done when he was young and vigorous? If he could not excel with loudness of voice, yet would he with eagerness of heart; and what his praise might lack in sound, it should gain in solemn earnestness. He was in trouble too, yet he would not allow the heyday of his prosperity to surpass in its notes of loving adoration the dark hour of his adversity. For him on no account could there be any going back. He had adored the Lord when he was but a youth and kept his father’s flock. Harp in hand, beneath the spreading tree, he had worshipped the Lord his Shepherd, whose rod and staff were his comfort and delight. When an exile he had made the rocky fastnesses of Adullam and Engedi resound with the name of Jehovah. In after time, when he had become king in Israel, his psalms had been multiplied, and his harpstrings were daily accustomed to the praises of the God of his salvation. How could that zealous songster make an advance in praise? See him yonder dancing before the ark of the Lord with all his might: what more of joy and zeal can be manifest? Yet he says: “I will yet praise thee more and more.” His troubles had been multiplied of late, and his infirmities too, yet for all that, no murmuring escapes him, but he resolved that his praise should rise higher and higher till he continued it in better lands for ever and ever.
Beloved, it is an intense joy to me to address you this morning after so long and sad an absence, and I pray that the Holy Spirit may make my word stimulating to you all. Our subject is that of our praising God more and more. I do not intend to exhort you to praise God; but shall take it for granted that you are doing so, though I fear it will be a great mistake in the case of many. We must, however, take that fact for granted in those to whom we address ourselves upon our particular topic; for those who do not praise God at all cannot be exhorted to praise him more and more. To those I direct my speech who now love to praise God; these would I charge to resolve with the psalmist: “I will yet praise thee more and more.”
I. Our first business shall be, to URGE OURSELVES TO THIS RESOLUTION. Why should we praise God more and more? Here I am embarrassed with the multitude of arguments which beset me. So many crowd around me that I cannot number them in order, but must seize them somewhat at random.
It is humbling to remember that we may very well praise God more than we have done, for we have praised him very little as yet. What we have done, as believers, in glorifying God Mls far, far short of his due. Personally, upon consideration, we shall each own this. Bethink thee, my dear brother, or sister, what the Lord has done for thee. Some years ago thou wast in thy sin, and death, and ruin; he called thee by his grace. Thou wast under the burden and curse of sin; he delivered thee. Didst thou not expect in the first joy of pardon to have done more for him, to have loved him more, to have served him better? What are the returns which thou hast made for the boons which thou hast received? Are they at all fitting or adequate? I look at a field loaded with precious grain and ripening for the harvest: I hear that the husbandman has expended so much in rent, so much upon the ploughing, so much upon enriching the soil, so much for seed, so much more for needful weeding. There is the harvest, and it yields a profit: he is contented. But I see another field: it is my own heart; and, my brother, thine is the same. What has the Husbandman done for it? He has reclaimed it from the wild waste, by a power no less then omnipotent. He has hedged it, ploughed it, and cut down the thorns. He has watered it as no other field was ever watered, for the bloody sweat of Christ has bedewed it, to remove the primeval curse. God’s own Son has given his whole self that this barren waste may become a garden. What has been done it were hard to sum: what more could have been done none can say. Yet what is the harvest? Is it adequate to the labor expended? Is the tillage remunerative? I am afraid if we cover our faces, or if a blush shall serve us instead of a veil, it will be the most fit reply to the question. Here and there a withered ear is a poor recompense for the tillage of infinite love. Let us, therefore, be shamed into a firm resolve, and say with resolute spirit: “By the good help of infinite grace, I, at any rate, having been so great a laggard, will quicken my pace; I will yet praise thee more and more.”