Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2310
“Howlong will You forget me, O LORD? Forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?…I wiil sing unto the LORD, because He has dealt bountifully with me.” Psalm 13:1,2, 6.
THIS is a very short Psalm, there are only six verses in it, but what a change there is between the beginning and the end of it! The first two verses are dolorous to the deepest degree, but the last verse is joyful to the highest degree. David begins many of his Psalms sighing and ends them singing, so that I do not wonder that Peter Moulin says, “One would think that those Psalms had been composed by two men of a contrary humor.” If I were asked, “Are there two men here, or is there only one?” My answer would be that there is only one, but that one is two, for every man is two men, especially every spiritual man. He will find within himself an old man and a new man, an old nature and a new nature—and even the new nature, itself, is subject to strange changes—so that, like April weather, we have sunshine and showers blended. Sometimes it seems as if all the showers were poured on top of the sunshine and the sunshine, itself, were quenched and could scarcely gladden us.
David was a wonderful man for changes of experience. God permitted him to go through many experiences, not so much for himself, as for the good of succeeding generations. Whenever you look into David’s Psalms, you may somewhere or other see yourselves. You never get into a corner but you find David in that corner. I think that I was never so low that I could not find that David was lower—and I never climbed so high that I could not find that David was up above me, ready to sing his song upon his stringed instrument, even as I could sing mine! These are two instantaneous photographs. The first one gives us the man complaining, the second one gives us the man rejoicing. I wonder whether we shall get two such photographs, tonight—some sitting here complaining, who, before the service is over, will go their way rejoicing? God grant that it may be so!
Possibly somebody here says, “I do not understand what you mean by each man being two men.” Well, let me say a little more on that point. Every man is a mystery. He is a mystery to other people, but, if he ever thinks, he is a great mystery to himself! And, if he never does think, why then, I think that he is a mystery, indeed, that he should have such a wondrous faculty as the power of thought, and yet should let it lie idle! He who does not study himself may think that he understands himself, but it is the judgment of folly. He who has been accustomed to make a friend of himself and has had himself for his companion, and talked to himself, and cross-examined himself, is the man who will say, “I am puzzled. I cannot make myself out. I am often at my wits’ end. I am such a strange mixture, and so dreadfully changeable.”
You must know yourself, dear Friend, in some measure, or else I am afraid that you will never know the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you do not know Him, then you do not know what eternal life means, for to know Him is eternal life! But why is it necessary for us to know ourselves, that we may know Christ? You must have some knowledge of the disease that you may know what the Physician can do—and there is also this Truth of God to be remembered—the Lord Jesus Christ is the model Man and only by knowing something about men do we know much about Him. Is it not strange that the Psalms are often so written that you do not know whether David is writing about himself or about the Lord Jesus? One verse can only be applied to Christ and you are certain that David is writing of the Messiah, but the next verse you can hardly apply to Christ, for there are some terms in it which would be derogatory to the Lord Jesus Christ, so it must refer to David. The fact is that there is a wonderful union between David and David’s Lord—there is a marvelous union be-
tween the saint and his Savior, between the Believer and Him in whom he believes—and you cannot always tell where one begins and the other ends.
So, if you have no knowledge of man, it is to be feared that you have no knowledge of that Son of Man, the Man of men, the Savior of men, the First-Born among many brethren, to whose likeness we are yet to be fully conformed. I invite anybody here who has not yet known the Savior, to pray to God to make him know himself. It may be that the discovery of what you are will necessitate your discovering what Christ is! A true estimate of your own poverty may compel you to resort to Him for wealth. A true sight of your own disease may force you to apply to Him for His all-healing medicine. Certainly it is to be urged upon you by the highest of motives that you do not, with all your understanding, forget to understand yourself and that, while you have many books on your shelf, you do not read them so as to forget this Book which lies within, this wonderful Book which concerns you more than all the writings of men, the Book of your own nature, your own needs, your own desires, your own changes! God make you familiar with them and then make you also familiar with the Book of Grace which is written in the life of the Son of Man!