Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1423
“The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped, therefore my heart greatly rejoices and with my song will I praise Him.” Psalm 28:7.
THIS passage has, to my mind, a peculiar charm. I do not know whether it breaks on your ears with like pathos and power. To me it seems charged with softness and sweetness, like some gentle strain of tender music. Let us read it again. “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped, therefore my heart greatly rejoices and with my song will I praise Him.” I think I see a battle raging furiously, yet he whom it most concerns, after having displayed his prowess and fought valiantly, steps aside and, sitting down in a quiet place, bomb-proof and almost out of sound of the cannons’ roar, thus talks with his heart. He forgets the raging strife—he is expecting a joyful victory! He knows his weaknesses, but he has caught a glimpse of the Divine strength which is guaranteed to him.
He is trembling, perhaps, from the toil of the fight, and yet he rests as one insensibly subdued to settled calm and mild composure—he rests in God. In like manner, I want you, dear Friends, to get out of the crowd a while, this evening, and take shelter in a quiet place. Forget, just now, the various troubles of business. The domestic cares which often harass you and the inward conflicts which vex your souls. Whatever there may be to disturb, distress, or distract you, let it alone! Now, for a while, revel in that sweet peace which God, alone, can give, the peace of God which passes all understanding—and say unto your soul—“The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped, therefore my heart greatly rejoices and with my song will I praise Him.”
The sentence, you will notice, divides itself into three parts. The first tells us of an assured possession—“The Lord is my strength and my shield.” The second speaks of a definite experience—“My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped.” There are no, “ifs,” no, “buts,” no suspense of the soul midway between hope and fear—he speaks without a trace of hesitancy, for he tells of his own actual experience. The third part of our text very properly closes with an expressed emotion—a very deep emotion it is—“My heart greatly rejoices.” And then, you see, the inward emotion is interpreted in a most proper fashion by an audible utterance—“With my song will I praise Him.”
I beg to call your studious attention to the remarkable form of this verse! There is a pair in the case of each of my divisions and the pair in each case consists of inward and outward. Notice, “The Lord is my strength,” that is inward. “My shield,” that is outward. “My heart trusted in Him,” that is inward. “And I am helped,” that is outward. “Therefore my heart greatly rejoices,” that is inward. “And with my song will I praise Him,” that is outward. It is by no means trifling to note these arrangements in the structure of sacred poetry, for there is a lesson to be learned—it teaches us that truth and beauty are to be linked together and that to be holy we need not be uncouth.
Full often we may observe a beautiful form and an admirable fashion in the language which embodied the thoughts of the inspired Psalmist. If we look at them long enough and meditate upon them fondly enough, we shall discern a symmetry in all his hallowed compositions which charms the taste, rivets the attention and helps the memory. The sacred poet served the Lord with his best powers, reckoning nothing to be good enough for the Lord whom he loved so well! Slovenly preaching, doggerel verses and discordant singing ought to be avoided, if possible, and our devotion should have the sweetest possible expression.
I. Let us begin with the first division of our text and may the Spirit of God give us full faith to accept it in all its depth of meaning. We have here A SURE POSSESSION—“The Lord is my strength and my shield.” With a double grip he takes hold of the Divine Covenant. “The Lord is my strength and my shield.” He gets a two-handed grasp of the God of Salvation. A touch of the hem of the Savior’s garment will heal—what Divine virtue, then, must stream into a man who can hold with both hands—not merely the garment’s hem, nor even the garment itself, but the Lord Himself! “The Lord is my strength and my shield.”
Perhaps some of you cannot give the double grip. Then give the finger’s touch and it will save you! But do not be always content with that touch—ask to lay hold upon Jesus and say, “I held Him and I would not let Him go.” Ask to grasp Him, like Jacob at the brook Jabbok with the brave resolve—“I will not let You go except You bless me.” No, get beyond that and pray to have Paul’s hold of Christ, which was so strong and firm that he said, “Who shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?” Both hands take hold, for the Psalmist sees a double blessing! He knows, also, that he has a double need, and so he takes a double grip. “The Lord is my strength and my shield.”