Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2151
“I opened my mouth, and panted: for I longed for Your commandments. Look You upon me, and be merciful unto me, as You used to do unto those that love Your name. Order my steps in Your Word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me.” Psalm 119:131,132,133.
LAST Lord’s-Day we spoke about being in the fear of God all the day long and I am afraid some thought, “The pastor has set a very high standard before us—not too high, but still far above what we have been able to reach.” I know that many desires after holiness were excited and many longings of heart went up to Heaven. It ought to be so as soon as the Truth of God is received into the mind. Note the context—“The entrance of Your Word gives light; it gives understanding unto the simple.” And then the next step is intensity of desire—“I opened my mouth and panted: for I longed for Your commandments.”
When we have light enough to see what holiness is and how desirable it is, then we should hunger and thirst after it. To be holy is to go to the University—to have a desire for it is to go to a preparatory school for children—and to labor and agonize for it is to go to the grammar school. I want to teach the young children and get them ready for that grammar school, that their course may be clear for the University of actual holiness of life. I shall not take you to the grammar school of strong desire with the view of your stopping there, but that I may coach you up, by God’s good Spirit, for the University of attainment where you will be “in the fear of the Lord all the day long.”
Here we have David desiring, praying, pleading and setting forth very clearly what he pants after. May you and I have the same burning desires. May we pant. May we thirst and at the same time may we clearly know what we are panting for, so that we may the more intelligently pursue it and thus go the nearest way to obtain it! May the Holy Spirit, the Author of holiness, help us in our meditations upon these three verses!
In the first verse you have the Psalmist longing intently after holiness— “I opened my mouth, and panted: for I longed for Your commandments.” In the next verse you have David pleading fervently for the thing that he desired, praying in this fashion, “Look You upon me, and be merciful unto me, as You used to do unto those that love Your name.” In the third verse you have the same man of God enlarging intelligently upon what it was that he pleaded for, giving both the positive and the negative side of it—“Order my steps in Your Word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me.”
I. First, then, we will think of LONGING ARDENTLY AFTER HOLINESS—“I opened my mouth, and panted: for I longed for Your commandments.” Observe carefully that the man of God longed for the Lord’s commandments. This cannot mean anything else than that he longed to know them, longed to keep them, longed to teach them, longed to bring all around him into obedience to them.
Many religious people long after the promises and they do well, but they must not forget to have an equal longing for the commandments. It is a sad sign when a man cannot bear to hear of the precepts, but must always have the preacher touching the string of privileges. To the renewed man it is a privilege to receive a command from the Lord whom he serves—and a great Grace to have the will and the power to obey it. To us Divine Grace means a power which sways us, as well as a favor which distinguishes us. To me the greatest privilege in all the world would be perfect holiness. If I had my choice of all the blessings I can conceive of, I would choose perfect conformity to the Lord Jesus, or, in one word, holiness.
I do not think I should have made Solomon’s choice of “wisdom,” unless it included wisdom of moral and spiritual character—and that is holiness. I said to a young girl the other day, “Are you perfect?” She answered that it was her greatest desire to be so, though she had not yet attained it. Just so. And that hallowed desire shows which way the heart
is going. No unrenewed heart ever sighed and cried after holiness! A mere passing wish is of but little worth—I am speaking of the intense and continual desire of the heart. We must strive after holiness with an agony of desire. Oh, to be rid of every sin! What is that but Heaven? Oh, to escape cleanly from every tendency to it and from every trace of it! This would be bliss. What more of happiness could we desire than to fulfill that Word of our Lord—“Be you perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect”?
Are you conscious of great longings to escape from sin? Do you feel far less dread of Hell than of sin? Is sin the worst of hells to you? Is it horrible, terrible, killing? Would it be the heaviest punishment that could be laid upon you if the Great Judge should say, “You are filthy, be filthy still. You are unholy, be unholy still”? It would certainly be the worst of deaths to some of us! The deepest prayer of our hearts is to be delivered from that inbred sin which is tinder in which the sparks of temptation find fuel. We long to be delivered from that law in our members which brings us into captivity to sin. Oh, that we could be like He who said, “The prince of this world comes and has nothing in Me”! How wonderful! “Nothing in Me”!