Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1657
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Evening, February 26, 1882
“Hold You me up, and I shall be safe: and I will have respect unto Your statutes continually.” Psalm 119:117.
“HOLD You me up.” This is no novelty as a prayer. We have met with it many a time. Another form of it lies hard by. Look at the verse immediately before the text and see it, there, in another shape. “Uphold me.” I know of no difference in the two prayers, “Uphold me” and, “Hold me up.” They are two notes from the same bell and they teach us that the Psalmist’s mind was full of the petition, for he was conscious of his need of this upholding—this holding up. We use not vain repetitions as the heathen do and, therefore, when we have to express the same idea, it is natural to the living child of God to couch it in as fresh words as he can—and though it is the same note, yet he changes it, somewhat, and first cries, “Uphold me”—and then, “Hold me up.”
Of course I am now preaching only from the English text when I note these changes of expression, and I am rather giving illustrations than teaching by authority. Yet this is of authority—that we have need, continually, to cry for upholding Grace. You notice that in the first prayer, “Uphold me,” it is for very life that he entreats for this upholding. “Uphold me according unto Your Word, that I may live: and let me not be ashamed of my hope.” He feels that unless fresh Grace shall flow into his soul, his spiritual life must utterly fail. Do not forget this—let it give weight to your pleading. But in the second of the two verses—the one which makes our text—he looks for more than life as the result of upholding. He looks for safety, a life of unsullied holiness and consequent restfulness and security. “Hold You me up, and I shall be safe, and I will have respect unto Your statutes continually.”
Both verses show you the importance of the prayer and both together, will, I hope, enlist your earnest attention to what I may have to say upon it. It is a very sweet remark that every prayer is an inverted promise. That is to say, God promises us such a blessing and, therefore, we pray for it. Or, if you please, if God teaches us to pray for any good thing, we may gather, by implication, the assurance that He means to give it! If you feel in your heart a God-inspired desire to ask a certain favor, it is because God intends to bestow it upon you! A prayer is the shadow of a coming blessing. Therefore we pray because the blessing is coming!
It is said that prayer cannot alter the purpose of God. Of course it cannot! It does not alter it, but indicates it, and since people are moved to pray this way or that way by the Spirit of God, it is because the Spirit knows the mind of God and His movement to pray is a Revelation of the mind of God to the praying one! Believing supplication is God writing His desires upon the hearts of His own children with the intent to fulfill them. Is it not written, Delight yourself, also, in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart? It is not that God will give the desires of His heart to every man. No—but to that man whose heart is in such sympathy with God that he delights in God and, consequently, desires what God desires! Then, when our heart runs side by side with the mind of God, our prayer is parallel with His purpose and, consequently, it is done unto us according to our desire.
Now, I conceive that it is always according to God’s mind to hold His servants up. He delights not in their slips or falls—to suppose such a thing were blasphemous! “The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord.” God is pleased with the steadfastness of His chosen. He smiles upon the firmness of their standing. God would not have one of His people even dash his foot against a stone and, therefore, He sets the angels to guard them. If they do trip in their walk, He is quick to restore them, for He cannot endure that they should lie in the mire. His joy is that we walk with Him in constant holiness and He is ready to grant us this gift.
This prayer shows in David a great sense of the need of being upheld—a strong conviction that God could uphold Him—and an expectation and hope that He would surely do so in answer to his prayer. May we appropriate this prayer with somewhat of David’s feeling—deeply conscious of utter helplessness, fully believing that the Omnipotent Grace of God can meet that helplessness—and confident that He will hear our cry and answer us and uphold us to the end. Let us
believe that our heavenly Father will keep us from falling, but let us be well assured that apart from His keeping, our soul will fall—and great will be the fall!
First, I shall speak of God’s holding us up and then of the two blessings that come out of it, namely, safety and watchfulness. “I shall be safe,” and, “I shall have respect unto Your statutes continually.”