Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1300
“None can keep alive his own soul” Psalm 22:29.
WE must commence by noticing the connection so that we may arrive at the first meaning of the words. There is a day coming when the true God will be acknowledged as Lord and God by all mankind, for the 27th verse tells us—“All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before You.” In that day the greatest of men will bow before Him. The verse from which we cull our text says, “All they that are fat upon earth shall eat and worship.” The prosperous ones, those who have grown rich and great, shall receive good at the hands of the Savior and shall rejoice to adore Him as the Author of their fatness! Kings shall acknowledge Him as their King and lords accept him as their Lord.
Then shall not only the riches of life, but the poverty of death, also, render Him homage, for as men shall go down to the dust of the grave, in their feebleness and weakness they shall look up to Him for strength and solace, and shall find it sweet to worship Him in death. Men shall know that the keys of death are in His hands. “All they that go down to the dust shall bow before Him,” and it shall be known all the world over that the issues of life are in the hands of Jesus Christ. They shall understand that He is appointed as Mediator to rule over all mortal things, for the government shall be upon His shoulders. He shall open and no man shall shut, and shut and no man shall open, for it is His Sovereign prerogative to kill and to make alive. “None can keep alive his own soul.”
I pass on from this meaning with the hopeful belief that this dispensation is not to end, as some suppose, without the conquest of the world to Christ. Surely “all kings shall bow before Him, all nations shall serve Him.” The shame of the Cross shall be followed by honor and glory—“men shall be blessed in Him, all nations shall call Him blessed.” The conviction grows with me every day, the more I read the Scriptures, that the disheartening views of some interpreters are not true, but that before the whole of prophecy shall be worked into history, the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.
Leaving this, we come to consider a more spiritual meaning which we believe to be as truly the sense of the passage as the other. You will notice, if you read the Psalm carefully, when you come to its close, that our Savior seems to delight Himself in being made food for the saved ones among the sons of men. In the 26th verse He says, “The meek shall eat and be satisfied.” Here, He is thinking of the poor among men, to whom He has ever been the source of abounding comfort. To them His Gospel has been preached and thousands of them have found, in Him, food for their souls which has satisfied them, filled their months with praise and made their hearts live forever.
The poor from the highways and hedges feast to the full at His royal table! Yes, the blind, the cripple and the lame— the very beggars of the streets—are among His household guests! Christ is very mindful of the poor and needy. He redeems their soul from deceit and violence, and their blood is precious in His sight. Especially do the poor in spirit feed on Jesus. Over them He pronounced the first benediction of the Sermon on the Mount and of them He declares, “theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.” What a feast do poor perishing spirits enjoy in Jesus when His flesh becomes to them meat, indeed, and His blood is drink, indeed!
Nor is this all the feeding upon Christ, for in the 29th verse we hear of it again. Not only the poor feed upon the Bread of Heaven, but the great, the rich and the strong live upon Him, too—“all they that are fat upon earth shall eat and worship.” There is no other way of life for them, for, “none can keep alive his own soul.” The saints, too, when they have grown in Grace. When they have satisfied their hunger and are fat and flourishing in the courts of the Lord’s House, must still eat of the same heavenly food. The fat need Jesus as much as the lean, the strong as much as the feeble, for none
can do without Him—“none can keep alive his own soul.” Thus the rich and the poor meet together and Jesus is the Food of them all. The empty and the full, alike, draw near to the Redeemer’s fullness and receive Grace for Grace.
Among those who feel their need of Jesus, there are some of a mournful type of character who count themselves ready to perish. They dare not number themselves among the meek who shall eat and be satisfied, much less could they think of themselves as the fat upon earth who shall eat and worship. No, they stand back from the feast as utterly unworthy to draw near. They dare not believe themselves to be spiritually alive unto God. They reckon themselves among those that go down into the Pit. They bear the sentence of death in themselves and are prisoners under bondage through fear. Their sense of sin and personal unworthiness is so conspicuous—and so painful—that they are afraid to claim the privileges of the living in Zion.