Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2166
“Because You have been my help, therefore in the shadow of Your wings will I rejoice.” Psalm 63:7.
In their time of trouble the children of God return to their Father. It is according to their newborn nature to seek Him from whom it came. The believing heart is like the needle in the compass—you may turn it round with your finger east and west—but when you withdraw the pressure, it will, beyond all doubt, tremble backward towards its pole. With God, the regenerate heart is in its proper position. A mystic something draws the new life towards the Source from where it came. We may, alas, by the force of temptation, or by the demands of business, or by an overpowering lethargy become indifferent to our highest love—but this cannot long continue—we can never rest except in God! The winds of trouble blow the dove of our soul back to the ark. Our heart repents of its wanderings when they bring it into a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. Then we long after Divine refreshments and cannot be quiet till we have them. Then we cry, “O God, You are my God; early will I seek You”!
The soul, in coming back to God, will be greatly helped by meditation. Hence the Psalmist says, “My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips: when I remember You upon my bed, and meditate on You in the night watches.” The soul feasts when it meditates! I am afraid these eager days leave little space for meditation, yet there is no exercise more nourishing to faith, love and all the Graces. David says, “I remember You; I meditate on You.” A transient thought of God may bless us largely, even as a touch of the hem of the Savior’s garment healed a woman of her plague. But to meditate upon Him is, as it were, to lean our head upon His bosom and enjoy full fellowship in His love. Oh, for more meditation! It would mean more Grace, more joy!
The photographer can take an instantaneous photograph and so can we, by ejaculatory prayer and vehement desire, obtain immediate help from Heaven. But in a certain state of the atmosphere the object needs longer exposure—needs, in fact, that its image should rest longer upon the sensitive plate before it will completely imprint itself. Meditation does, as it were, set the Lord long before the soul so that it receives His image more completely. Happy is he who can say, “I have set the Lord always before me”! Thoughts of God are as when a man climbs a hill, looks upon a landscape and cries out exultingly, “How beautiful is this scenery!”
But if you would have a figure of meditation, you must see that man standing on the hilltop for a long space of time and marking the features of the landscape. Look, yonder is the spire of a village church! Mark the cottages nestling around it! There flows a river and, hard by, a broad sheet of water, like a looking glass, reflects the sun. Mark the distant range of hills and the woods and wilds which lie between. Note well the valley bronzed with a thousand fields of corn divided like a garden by hedgerows. Such a view as this is instructive and abides in the memory. He understands the country best who has seen most of it—and we know the Lord, by His Spirit—far better by quiet meditation than by any other means.
We not only remember our God once, but we remember, and remember, and remember, and remember again till memory flowers into meditation. Thoughts of God crop the herbage, but meditation chews the cud—and it is the chewing of the cud which yields nourishment. Oh, that you and I may often cheer our sleepless hours by heavenly meditations, for thus shall the pure in heart see their God and thus shall they enter into the closest fellowship with Him! Among our subjects for meditation should be God’s gracious dealings with us. David meditated upon his whole life in the light of its connection with God. He read his diary through and specially dwelt upon the points where he had come into contact with the Invisible and the Infinite. He remembered the help he had received from Omnipotence. He knew God best by special times of gracious aid.
After all, it is not what we read in the Bible, but what we feel in the heart which actually gives us our best acquaintance with God. A hundred biographies of other men will not make so much impression upon us as the knowing of God in our own personal experience. If we can say of Him, “You have been my help,” we shall meditate upon Him to good purpose.
Once more—when the heart comes back to God, riding in the golden chariot of meditation, the natural instinct is to speak to Him. Hence my text is not only the Word of God, but a word with God! The Psalmist does not direct the words of the text to us, but to God Himself—“Because You have been my help, therefore in the shadow of Your wings will I rejoice.” Beloved, it is a delightful thing to converse with God! Do you indulge this habit? If the Lord is your Father, should you not, as a child, speak with Him every day? If you are married to Christ, should not the spouse speak with her Well-Beloved? It were very strange if she did not! Private devotion ought to be a dialogue between the soul and God— by the Scripture the Lord speaks to us—and by prayer we speak to Him.