Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1122
“I shall be anointed with fresh oil.” Psalm 92:10.
DAVID IS very positive. He does not say, “I hope I shall be anointed with fresh oil and I have a pleasing expectation that it may be so.” But he speaks of his future as absolutely certain—“I shall be anointed with fresh oil.” Nor will it appear at all wonderful that he should be so positive if you read the Psalm, for his subject there is the ever-living and all-sufficient God. And when we get near to God we get into the region of positive certainty. While we depend upon man we are in the realm of, “maybe,” and, “hope,” and, “perhaps”—but when we come to rest in God we are far removed from everything that is of chance and conjecture. Our God is the God of Truth and Righteousness. “He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”
Man is but a treacherous quicksand where confidence is shipwrecked, but the Lord is a haven of security. We do well neither to boast in ourselves nor to place our reliance on the promises of our fellow creatures. But we may wisely boast in the great “I AM,” and rest our souls securely upon His Word and His love. He can neither change nor fail. “He is not a man that He should lie, nor the son of man that He should repent.” David, therefore, felt quite at his ease about the future. He felt certain that God, who had given him a measure of Grace, would give him more Grace. He entertained no suspicion that God’s great resources would run out, or that God would withhold them from His own. He says, “I shall be anointed with fresh oil.”
Beloved, let us draw near to God and so let us drink at the wellhead which can never be dried up. Let us give up looking to the broken cisterns which do but mock us and let us turn to the inexhaustible deep which lies under, which is always ready to overflow for our need. Let us think, at this time of the confidence of David and we shall remark upon it thus. First, it was a confidence full of meaning—“I shall be anointed with fresh oil,” is a most expressive utterance. Secondly, it was a confidence exceedingly well-grounded. Thirdly, it was a confidence which calmed his fear. And fourthly, it excited his hopes. And in the last place, if we possess it, it is a confidence which will lead us to pity those who are destitute of it.
I. THE CONFIDENCE HERE EXPRESSED IS FULL OF MEANING. What did he intend by saying, “I shall be anointed with fresh oil”? He meant, first, that his strength should be renewed. It was a common belief among the Orientals that anointing with oil added to a man’s vigor. They regarded it as the symbol of renewed strength. So David felt and knew that God would, whenever it was required, renew his strength. Times of weakness will happen to us all. A great strain may be put upon us and we may become exhausted. Or, under severe depression of spirit, we may imagine ourselves to be ready to die. But at all such times God will supply strength to us—our extremity will be His opportunity—our time of famine will be His hour of plenty.
Is not His strength made perfect in weakness? Is it not written that “He gives power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increases strength”? David sung in the 103rd Psalm, “He satisfies my mouth with good things; so that my youth is renewed like the eagle’s,” and he expected it always to be so. “He restores my soul,” he says in the 23rd Psalm. Often do his Psalms, which commence in painful depression, conclude with exultation because heavenly love had poured fresh life into his swooning soul. From many a soul-sickness had the son of Jesse been recovered. From many a sinking had he been lifted up into holy joy. He here expresses his conviction that the Lord would always deal thus graciously with him. Expect this, then, my Brothers and Sisters, that God will give you new strength as you shall require it. “As your days, so shall your strength be.” “He gives more Grace.” Go to Him in the time of your weakness, in the confidence of this text—“I shall be anointed with fresh oil.”
David meant, in the second place, that he should be afresh assured of the Divine favor. To anoint a man with oil was a token of his welcome to your house. His feet were washed that he might be refreshed and then the notable guest, worthy of special honor, was anointed with perfumed nard. So David says that as he had received tokens of Divine favor before, he should receive them yet again. O Beloved, you know what it is to revel in the smiles of God and find a Heaven in His manifested love! You have basked in the sunlight of your Father’s love many a time and felt an ecstasy such as worldlings cannot imagine! Has not the Lord been pleased to make the name of Jesus to your souls “like ointment poured forth”? Oftentimes has He brought you into His banqueting house and His banner over you has been love. He has made for you a feast of fat things, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well-refined.