Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1072
“Quicken me in Your way.” Psalm 119:37.
I THINK you will find the prayer for quickening repeated nine times in this Psalm. The form of it differs but it is always the same vehement cry, “Quicken me, O Lord.” In addition to this you will hear David twice acknowledge that God had quickened him, saying on one occasion, “Your Word has quickened me,” and in another place, “Your precepts have quickened me,” so that 11 times in one Psalm David turns his contemplations to the subject of quickening. This shows us the very great importance which he attached to it.
Remember well that this Psalm is dedicated to the praise of the Word of God. Throughout its entire length it sounds forth the honor of God’s statutes and in some way or other the Word of the Lord is mentioned in every one of its 176 verses. The Psalm is a star of the first magnitude and all its beams direct us to the Divine statutes. It is clear from this that there must be an intimate connection between quickening and the Word of God. Indeed, it is so, for when we are much acquainted with the Word of God we also discover more of our own deadness and lack of spiritual life.
And, moreover, inasmuch as we find David twice blessing God that the Word had quickened him, we see another connection between the Word and quickening, namely, that while the Word convinces us of our death, it is also the means in the hand of the Spirit of God of our resurrection to newness of life. It kills, but it also makes alive! It quickens and it sustains what it begets. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God shall man live.”
Would you mourn your sluggishness? See it in the light of God’s Word. Would you escape from your sloth? Be animated by the holy warmth of the revealed Truth of God. For both purposes, for conviction and for edification, the precious Truths which are set forth in Scripture by the Holy Spirit will be exceedingly efficacious.
I purpose, this morning, in handling the brief prayer of our text, to note, first, that it deals with the Believer’s frequent need. Secondly, it directs him to the sole Worker of his quickening. Thirdly, it describes the true sphere of renewed spiritual vigor. And fourthly, it denotes that there may be special reasons and seasons when we should say, “Quicken me.”
I. The prayer before us, “Quicken me in Your way,” DEALS WITH THE BELIEVER’S FREQUENT NEED. I am sure that this is a frequent need of Believers because we find David in this Psalm so often confessing his need—and where the best of God’s servants feel their need of a thing—we may be quite sure that the rest of the family are under the same necessity. David seems to have been by no means sluggish in the Divine life. That wonderful photograph of his internal being which we have in the book of Psalms shows us that he was a man of intensely fervent love to God. We see he was a man whose nature was vital to a degree of sensitive and energetic energy seldom, if ever, exceeded.
Panting, crying, pleading, singing, rejoicing, exulting—he was all life and of him it could not be said that he was neither cold nor hot. Notwithstanding the grievous fault into which he fell, his inner life was, as a rule, vigorous, healthy and energetic. And yet that man of God prayed often, “Quicken me.” Oh my Soul, you are not to be compared with David for a single moment! What need, then, have you to pray again and again, even with agony of soul, “Quicken me, O
God!”
But, Beloved, there is no reason to refer to others of God’s servants for proof of this. You yourselves know, in your own souls, that your spirit is most apt to become sluggish and that you have need frequently to put up the prayer, “Quicken me.” Apart from Him who is your life, what are you but a mass of corruption? You know this experimentally, do you not? There are some among you who have received a more abundant measure of spiritual life than the preacher has yet obtained, but I fear that the great majority of us are in the very opposite condition and have need to sigh and cry
over our lack of inward strength. We need to lament more deeply our manifold deficiencies. If there is a prayer in this Bible which well becomes my lips, it is just this, “Lord, quicken me in Your way.”
I fear that those who are least ready to confess this are the very persons who ought to admit it first, and I am certain that a large number of God’s people feel that they are dry and sapless and have need to be revived by life from above. Let us think over this matter a minute. Some years ago we needed quickening most emphatically, but then we had no power to pray, “Quicken me,” for we were dead in trespasses and sins. No dead man ever prayed to be quickened! Such a prayer would be an index of life. A really spiritual prayer for quickening can only come from those in whom the quickening Spirit has already taken up His abode!