Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1305
“I have set the Lord always before Me: because He is at My right hand, I shall not be moved.” Psalm 16:8.
IN the preceding verses we read, “The lines are fallen unto Me in pleasant places; yes, I have a goodly heritage.” The speaker, therefore, is a very contented and happy man. It is not the most usual thing in the world to find persons extolling their lot and manifesting a conspicuous emphasis of satisfaction. Far more common is it to hear men surrounded with favors lamenting the hardness of their case! Contented minds are almost as scarce as snowflakes in harvest. The man who rejoices in his goodly heritage deserves attention and we shall do well to learn his secret. How is it that he is able to feel so happy? Let us seek out the way by which he arrived at this peace and discover the silken clue which led him into such a bower of delight. Perhaps his road may fit our feet and, by following it, we may become as perfectly content as he was. O Lord and Giver of peace, help us in the search!
But, first, who is this person who is thus singularly content? To our astonishment we find that the Spirit speaks here by prophecy in the name and Person of our Lord Jesus Christ! It is He, who, by the Spirit, here said, “The lines have fallen unto Me in pleasant places; yes, I have a goodly heritage!” He was the “Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.” He was “despised and rejected of men.” He had not where to lay His head. He was often subject to hunger and thirst. He had few friends and those proved faithless in the time of His extremity. So how could He speak thus? All this is so much the more encouraging for us, because if this most sorrowful of men, was, nevertheless, able to feel an inward calm, a sweet contentment, then it must be possible for us to do so whose lot is not so bitter!
We are not sent to make atonement for sin and, therefore, our sorrows are few compared with our Lord’s. There was a special reason for His being distressed, for He took our griefs and carried our sorrows. But no atoning griefs are demanded of us, nor have we afflictions to bear from the hand of God as punishments for sin, for the Lord has laid all these upon Him and we are clear. If the Lord Jesus, the Man of grief, a mourner all His days, yet said the lines had fallen unto Him in pleasant places and He had a goodly heritage, it must be the more possible for us to rise to the same contentment if we follow His rules and live according to His example.
What, then, is the secret of perfect peace and happiness here below? The price is above rubies—where shall this be learned? The magic lamps and wonderful rings of which children read in fairy stories are as nothing in value compared with this true philosopher’s stone, this mystic secret of the Lord which is with them that fear Him—by which His saints are enabled to enjoy the peace of God which passes all understanding—which keeps their hearts and minds by Jesus Christ. O Prince of Peace, grant us this rest!
Our text clearly imparts to us the secret of the greatest happiness to be found below the skies and, indeed, it reveals the hidden source of those pleasures above which are at God’s right hand forevermore. The first part of the excellent method lies in always living in the Lord’s Presence—“I have set the Lord always before Me.” The second is found in always trusting in the Lord’s Presence—“Because He is at My right hand, I shall not be moved.”
I. The secret, then, of peace, is, first, ALWAYS LIVING IN THE LORD’S PRESENCE—”/ have set the Lord always before Me.” We shall try, in order to understand what this means, to keep our eyes upon the life of Jesus and, at the same time, apply the text to the saints. Though this passage is pre-eminently fulfilled in Jesus, yet since the members partake of the nature of the Head, each one, in his own degree, who does that which Jesus did and thereby obtains a holy joy and rest, may enter into the joy of our Lord.
Does not our Lord Jesus bid us take His yoke upon us and learn of Him, that we may find rest unto our souls? I take it that our text means first, that we should make the Lord’s Presence the greatest of all facts to us. Of all things that are,
God chiefly /S, and we should regard Him in that light. It was so with our Lord Jesus Christ. He, as a Man, was cognizant of the existence of all the things that are seen, but even more did He recognize the existence of God, who cannot be seen—that great Spirit who is alike invisible and incomprehensible. How vividly the Presence of God must have been realized by Christ at all times, for He was in the Father and the Father in Him!
You and I have never seen and understood the Father in the same degree as He did, though the Son has revealed Him to us. He entered into a fuller and more constant recognition of God’s Presence in all places and things, than we, as yet, have done. Yet truly we have seen the Father, for we have seen Jesus by faith. We have mounted up on wings as eagles and with the eagle’s eyes have looked the sun in the face and have not been blinded! Is it not written, “The pure in heart shall see God”? We have been taught to see God around us in all things that exist and in all events that happen. And we bless the Lord that we live not as those who are “without God in the world,” that we are taught by the Spirit to recognize our Father’s loving, all-pervading Presence!