Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1701
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, January 14, 1883
“Make us glad according to the days in which You have afflicted us, and the years in which we have seen evil. Let Your work appear to Your servants, and Your glory to their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands for us; yes, establish the work of our hands.” Psalm 90:15-17.
TO understand this Psalm, you must observe its black border. Remember the sorrows of Moses, the man of God, who saw a whole generation die in the wilderness and was, himself, denied admission to the promised land. The man, Moses, was greatly afflicted. I might almost call him, as far as his life in the wilderness was concerned, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” He dug the desert till it became a cemetery, for he lived amid 40 years of funerals. This 90th Psalm is saturated with the griefs of a sentenced generation, by whom it could be truly said, “We are consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath are we troubled.”
We have, in our own case, as a Church and people, a double black border to surround our text this morning, for death has despoiled us a second time. We were, last Wednesday, burying our honored deacon, William Higgs, and at the moment of our meeting for that solemn purpose, another greatly esteemed deacon, William Mills, (William Mills, Esq., for many years a beloved deacon of the Church in the Metropolitan Tabernacle, was taken to his rest January 12th, 1883, at the age of sixty-two), was suddenly stricken down with paralysis, to linger for a few hours and then to breathe out his soul unto God. I shall not trust myself to speak about him, for this double loss has, to a great extent, unnerved me. But this I must say, that he was an experienced and mature Christian and, above all, a quiet, diligent, loving, gracious servant of our common Master, whose care was the poor of the Church, to whom he distributed our alms with discretion and tenderness.
It was pleasant to hear from him the story of his Christian experience. His was a calm and lowly walk. Of late, being weakly, he was much at home and there the Psalms of David and the Morning and Evening Portions were his comfort. He was always a source of strength to his pastor and his Brothers and Sisters, always of great service to the Church, far more so than the mass of our people will ever know—but of late he ripened and mellowed into an unusual sweetness and spirituality. My last interview with him gave me a high idea of his thorough composure and his perfect preparedness to commune with the glorified host above. He is gone—gone happily and safely Home. He had no pain or struggle, but gradually melted into eternal life. To us who remain, one sorrow has succeeded another to keep our wound bleeding and smarting.
How well did Moses pray, “Return, O Lord, how long? And let it repent You concerning Your servants.” Oh that our God would no more put His hand into the bitter box, as Herbert calls it, but now change His dispensation and revive the spirit of His contrite ones! On our part, as we are made to sympathize with the man of God in this Psalm, so let us imitate his example. Like he in multiplied bereavements, let us be like he in Grace and faith! Observe that the first word of this painful Psalm is, “Lord, You have been our dwelling place,” as if, touched by the rod, the sufferer remembered his Father. Will the hypocrite always call upon God? No, and when God deals roughly with him, he will kick against the pricks.
But the child of God, when he is smitten, turns to the hand that smote him and cries, “Show me why You contend with me?” If foxes and wolves are prowling about, and the shepherd’s dog appears, they fly here and there as far away as they can. But when the dog is sent after the sheep, he fetches them back to the shepherd. Trouble drives away the carnal man from his pretended religion, but it gathers the true sheep together and, being awakened and alarmed, they seek the
Good Shepherd. The more of grief we feel, the more of Grace we need—and the nearer to our Comforter we come! Closer to God is the cry of the troubled saint!—
“Nearer, my God, to Thee! Nearer to Thee! Even though it be a cross Thatraises me; Still all my cry shall be, Nearer, my God, to Thee! Nearer to Thee!”
Observe, also, that this Psalm is “a prayer of Moses.” The comfort of a child of God in the darkness is prayer. Adversity, blessed of the Holy Spirit, calls our attention to the promises. The promises quicken our faith. Faith betakes itself to prayer—God hears and answers our cry! This is the chain of a tried soul’s experience. Brothers and Sisters, as we suffer tribulation, as we know the promise, let us immediately exercise faith and turn in prayer to God, for surely never did a man turn to God but the Lord also turned to Him! If we are set a-praying, we may depend upon it—the Lord is set on blessing! Blessings are on the way from Heaven—their shadow falls upon us even now!