Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1365
“Those that are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing; to show that the Lord is upright; He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.” Psalm 92:13-15.
THESE verses occur at the close of a Psalm for the Sabbath over which there rests a Sabbatic glory of perfect calm, of hallowed peace. Amidst the business and bustle of daily life the great trouble of the Psalmist was the prosperity of the wicked, but it does not trouble him at all when he enters the sanctuary to keep the holy day. He then looks upon the ungodly who prosper in the world as so much flowering grass in their beauty and he beholds them cut down and utterly destroyed. And it is meet that a Psalm for the Sabbath should be calm and peaceful, cloudless and far-seeing. If on any day we see things in their right light and our views extend farther than at other times, surely it should be on the day of sacred rest.
I know a friend who wished to take a house in Newcastle. It stood on an elevated position and the landlord, who wished to have him for a tenant, took him to the attic of the house and said, “What a view there is from this window! Do you know,” he asked, “that on Sundays you can see Durham Cathedral?” “On Sundays!” said my friend, with a look of surprise, “And why not on other days?” “Well,” said the landlord, “on Sundays there is less smoke and so you can see farther.” And, as it is in the natural world, so it should always be in the spiritual—less of the smoke of this world—less of the dust and the care of life and, therefore, a clearer vision of the things which are beyond—things which God reveals to spiritual eyes! Read and sing this Psalm often and may your heart constantly be in that sweet restful state.
David, having here put aside this trouble which he so often brings up in the Psalms—the frequent prosperity of the wicked as they exult in power and spread themselves like a green bay tree, while the righteous are plagued all the day long and chastened every morning—after putting that aside, he dwells upon the delightful condition of the man of God and he describes him as a tree that is planted in the courts of God’s house, growing, flourishing and bearing fruit even in old age. It is of such we are now going to speak and we shall call your attention to the planting of the trees, the promise that they shall flourish, the continued fertility they exhibit and the conclusive proof they show of God’s faithfulness. “Those that are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God.”
I. THE PLANTING. It sounds odd to you to hear of planting a tree in a house and of its flourishing in courts, but you will please remember that an Oriental house is a sort of quadrangle. It is a four-square building with the middle open to the sky and generally there is a small garden in which a palm tree, or an olive, or some other evergreen tree (for they generally prefer that sort) will be found planted. So what seems strange to us—a tree planted in a house—was not at all strange to David or to anybody else who lived in the city of Jerusalem. And it is a very beautiful figure—this being planted within the four courts of God’s house that we might grow right in the middle of the place where God, with His family, deigns to dwell.
What, then, is it to be planted? Well, we are planted in God’s house in two respects. First, in regeneration, when we are born into the house and, secondly, at our profession of faith, which should be by Baptism, when we are publicly brought into the house and planted in the likeness of Christ’s death by being buried, after His commandment, in the water. We are really planted in the courts of the Lord’s house by the new birth. Then we become the children of God, for “as many as received Him (that is to say, Him who is the Divine Word, the true Light, the Savior), to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
Every man, the world over, who has been born of the Holy Spirit, is really planted in the Lord’s house. But we become manifestly and visibly so on confessing to the world this inward and spiritual Grace, for the Lord has thus put it, you know, “He that with His heart believes, and with His mouth makes confession, shall be saved,” so that when I come to join God’s people and ask to be admitted to their fellowship—when I come to the Lord’s Table with them and publicly acknowledge myself to be one of the Master’s servants—then I, am in a public manner, planted in the house of the Lord. Well, this being the fact, let us follow the figure a little more closely.
Planting implies, first, that there has been something done for us that that we could not do for ourselves. A tree cannot plant itself! There are self-sown trees, but such are not spoken of in the text. It is, “those that are planted in the house of the Lord.” And you know it is necessary that there should be a work of Grace upon our souls, which shall come, not from ourselves, but distinctly from God, for, “every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up.” It cannot plant itself and, if it could, it must be rooted up, because it would not be planted by the heavenly Father. There must be worked upon us, in order to our being truly in the courts of the Lord’s house, a work of Grace infinitely beyond the power of the will or all the power that dwells in human nature.