Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1656
“Forever, O Lord, Your Word is settled in Heaven. Your faithfulness is unto all generations: You have established the earth and it abides. They continue this day according to Your ordinances: for all are Your servants. Unless Your Law had been my delights, I should then ha ve perished in my affliction.” Psalm119:89-92.
EVEN in those Psalms which are not associated with any particular chapter of history, we can often trace out the trail of the writer’s experience and track his soul through its wanderings. His reflections become vivid with intense reality. The meditation now before us is evidently prompted by some event deeply carved on the writer’s memory. “Unless Your Law had been my delights, I should then have perished in my affliction.” We know nothing of the time or circumstance when the heart was terrified, when the nerves were shaken, when the weakness of nature asserted itself—the veil is wisely drawn over the sharp pains or sullen griefs that bowed the sufferer down and we are simply solaced with a song celebrating his deliverance out of all his troubles and fears. Possibly his affliction was long, but certainly it reached a crisis so perilous that his life then trembled in the balance! He was then ripe for destruction, ready to have perished.
Moreover, it is noteworthy that whatever his trial may have been, whether it was a sickness or a disaster, or any other manner of adversity, he refers to it as his own—he calls it, “my affliction.” It would ill become us, therefore, to pry into the cause or fashion of his grief, or to ask any further questions. Quite likely I may be addressing some dear child of God who is vexed with an affliction so personal and so peculiar that he feels it to be “his own,” and would deem it an intrusion for another to interfere. Let us not intrude, for we should only increase the grief by our enquiries.
“My affliction” is an expression that bears a marked emphasis and has a tone entirely its own. I do not know whether I am more struck with its pathos or its reticence. At the sound of such words, a stranger might well be touched with pity, but a friend, however sympathizing, would shrink from prying into the secrets of a heart that so delicately conceals its own bitterness. The one and only thing that the Psalmist was eager to tell us was the prescription that soothed his pains and sustained his spirits. On mature reflection, he is confident that he would have perished under that affliction if it had not been for certain comfortable and delightful reflections concerning God’s Word. You and I may, at any time, be exposed to the same mental or spiritual depression, through one or other of those manifold sorrows which enter so largely into Christian life. There are plenty of miry places on the way to Heaven and so it will be our wisdom to diligently enquire how this good man passed through them.
I like to hear how any godly man has been comforted, for it comforts me. I take a deep interest in the simple tale of any humble prisoner whose bonds the Lord has loosed. And I feel it a choice pleasure to chime in with songs of thanksgiving which come from the lips of grateful suppliants whose cries the Lord has heard. Observe that the Psalmist appeals to certain facts which he remembered. “Forever, O Lord, Your Word is settled in Heaven. Your faithfulness is unto all generations: You have established the earth, and it abides,” etc. And then he refers to certain delights which he experienced in reviewing these facts -“Unless Your Law had been my delights, I should have perished in my affliction.”
I. Here, then, we have strong consolation IN CERTAIN FACTS WHICH HE REMEMBERED. Fly to the mountains when the enemy invades the land. Hide in the strongholds of your God!
1. Our first comfort is the eternal existence of God which is implied in the continuance of His faithfulness and power. “The Lord lives” is the plea of souls harassed and haunted by foes without and fears within. Observe, I pray you, that there is nothing casual or accidental in the tone of the Psalmist’s meditation, as if some stray thought had darted a ray of light into the mind of one who was dreary and downcast. His joy is not like a flower that blooms in the desert, or a bird that chirps merrily amidst the frost of winter—he has abundant and even overflowing causes for joy! His confidence runs
on the grand old classic lines which Inspiration has hallowed. When Moses was appalled by the frailty of man, he uttered his majestic ode to the eternity of God. “Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.”
So here, the eternal existence of God is the first fact to which the afflicted saint clings. According to the most eminent scholars, the opening sentence should be read—“Forever You are, O Lord; Your Word is settled in Heaven.” The second verse, as you may notice, is divided into two sentences, and the poetic parallelism requires a like arrangement in this verse, if the poetic rule is carried out. But this would not form two stanzas unless we read the first four words as a distinct sentence—“Forever, O Lord, You are.” Whether this revision is warranted or not does not matter, for, as I have already said, the fact is implied in the wording of the authorized version. God is. He is forever the same and His years are throughout all generations. This is a very simple Truth of God—who but a madman or a fool ever doubted it?