Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2084
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, May 5, 1889
“The Words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.” Psalm 12:6.
IN this Psalm our text stands in contrast with the evil of the age. The Psalmist complains that the “godly man ceases. The faithful fail from among the children of men.” It was a great grief to him and he found no consolation except in the Words of the Lord. What if men fail—the Word of the Lord abides! What a comfort it is to quit the arena of controversy for the green pastures of Revelation! One feels like Noah, when shut within the ark—he saw no longer the death and desolation which reigned outside. Live in communion with the Word of God and even in the absence of Christian friends you will not lack for company.
Furthermore, the verse stands in fuller contrast still with the words of the ungodly when they rebel against God and oppress His people. They said, “With our tongue will we prevail. Our lips are our own: who is Lord over us?” They boasted, they domineered, they threatened. The Psalmist turned away from the voice of the boaster to the Words of the Lord. He saw the promise, the precept and the doctrine of pure Truth and these consoled him while others spoke every man vanity with his neighbor. He had not so many of the Words of the Lord as we have—but what he had made his own by meditation, he prized above the finest gold.
In the good company of those who had spoken under Divine direction he was able to bear the threats of those who surrounded him. So, dear Friends, if at any time your lot is cast where the Truths you love so well are despised, get back to the Prophets and Apostles and hear through them what God the Lord will speak. The voices of earth are full of falsehood but the Word from Heaven is very pure. There is a good practical lesson in the position of the text—learn it well. Make the Word of God your daily companion and then whatever may grieve you in the false doctrine of the hour, you will not be too much cast down. For the Words of the Lord will sustain your spirit.
Looking at the text, does it not strike you as a marvel of condescension that Jehovah, the Infinite, should use words? He has arranged for us, in His wisdom, this way of communicating with one another. But as for Himself, He is pure spirit and boundless—shall He contract His glorious thoughts into the narrow channel of sound and ear and nerve? Must the eternal mind use human words? The glorious Jehovah spoke worlds! The heavens and the earth were the utterances of His lips. To Him it seems more in accordance with His Nature to speak tempests and thunders than to stoop to the humble vowels and consonants of a creature of the dust.
Will He in very deed communicate with man in man’s own way? Yes, He stoops to speak to us by words. We bless the Lord for verbal inspiration, of which we can say, “I have esteemed the words of Your mouth more than my necessary food.” I do not know of any other inspiration, neither am I able to conceive of any which can be of true service to us. We need a plain revelation upon which we can exercise faith. If the Lord had spoken to us by a method in which His meaning was infallible, but His Words were questionable, we should have been rather puzzled than edified. For it is a task, indeed, to separate the true sense from the doubtful words. We would always be afraid that the Prophet or Apostle had not, after all, given us the Divine sense. It is easy to hear and to repeat words. But it is not easy to convey the meaning of another into perfectly independent words of your own.
We believe that holy men of old, though using their own language, were led by the Spirit of God to use words which were also the Words of God. The Divine Spirit so operated upon the spirit of the inspired writer that he wrote the Words of the Lord, and we, therefore, treasure up every one of them. To us “every Word of God is pure,” and full of soul nutriment. “Man does not live by bread, only, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord does man live.” We can heartily declare with the Psalmist, “You are my portion, O Lord: I have said that I would keep Your words.”
Our condescending God is so well pleased to speak to us by words that He has even deigned to call His only-begotten Son, “The Word.” “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” The Lord uses words not with reluctance but with pleasure. And He would have us think highly of them, too, as He said to Israel by Moses, “Therefore shall you lay up these My Words, in your heart and in your soul.”
We believe that we have the Words of God preserved for us in the Scriptures. We are exceedingly grateful that it is so. If we had not the Words of the Lord thus recorded we should have felt that we lived in an evil time, since neither voice nor oracle is heard today. I say we should have fallen upon evil days if the words that God spoke of old had not been recorded under His direction. With this Book before us, what the Lord spoke two thousand years ago he virtually speaks now—for “He will not call back His Words” (Isa. 31:2). His Word abides forever. It was spoken, not for one occasion, but for all ages.