Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2415
“Your testimonies have I taken as an heritage forever: for they are the rejoicing of my heart.” Psalm 119:111.
WHEN David wrote these words, he was not in a condition of ease and luxury. He was not in a position of assured safety, for he says in the 109th verse, “My soul is continually in my hand.” You know what we mean when we say that a man carries his life in his hand—that is to say, he expects death, he is in imminent peril—and may, at any moment, be cut off from his fellows. It was when David was in such a condition as that, hunted, as he tells us in another place, like a partridge upon the mountains, that he could say, “Your testimonies have I taken as an heritage forever.” He was rich in his poverty, he was enthroned in his exile, he was happy in his sorrow and they who have enjoyed a similar experience in their times of distress know how this can be!
I. With no further preface, I want to talk to you about our text under four heads, the first of which will be, LET US MAKE A MAP OF THIS ESTATE—“Your testimonies have I taken as an heritage forever.”
There was David’s heritage, that portion of goods that fell to him, that piece of goodly land that was his lot— “Your testimonies.” Ah, Brothers and Sisters, I cannot draw a complete map of this estate, it is so large, so wonderful, but, thank God, you can go and see it for yourselves! Walk over its broad acres, lie down in its green pastures, rest beside its still waters. It is, indeed, a wealthy country that is described in those two words, “Your testimonies.”
But what does the Psalmist mean by this declaration? He means, first, that he had a heritage of truth in the testimonies of God. A man’s mind is rich very much in proportion to the truth he knows. He who knows the Word of God is mentally rich—he has a large heritage. There are persons, I am told—deists—who believe in God, but who do not believe in the Word of God. They believe, then, in a god who has never spoken, a silent god, a god who has, at any rate, never spoken to his noblest creatures most capable of understanding his mind. To them, God is One who remains locked up forever in exclusiveness, except so far as His works may reveal Him. I think there are many difficulties in the way of receiving such a theory as that. Whatever difficulties there may be about God having spoken to us and given us testimonies—and that is the meaning of the word in our text—there are none so great to overcome as this one would be, that, through all these ages, so many men have sought after God and so many craving hearts have yearned to find God, yet He should have suffered six thousand years, at least, to pass, and should never have spoken to men a single word that they can understand!
Now, so far from accepting that theory, I believe this Word of God to be God’s testimony, God’s speech, God’s declaration about Himself and about many other things that His creatures need to know—God’s witness-bearing to us, out of the depth of His Divine Knowledge—that we may know and understand and see things aright. And I say, and I am sure that many of you will say with me, these speeches of God, these Revelations of God which I find in these two Books of the Old and the New Testaments are my heritage. I rejoice to accept them as the estate of my mind, the treasure of my thought, the mint of the heavenly realm, the mine from which I can explore fresh veins of thought as long as I live, claiming all as my heritage forever! I have been preaching the Word of God these 26 years in this one place to very much the same congregation all the while and if I had been obliged to preach from any other book, I would have worn it threadbare by this time! But the Bible is as fresh to me, today, as when first I began to speak from it as a boy, and preached to you from it as a youth. It is an inexhaustible heritage of mental wealth to the man who will accept it and give his mind to the study of it.
Look at the doctrines, the precepts, the promises, the prophecies, the histories, the experiences—it is no use for me to try to map out this estate, it is so large! As a great heritage of mental wealth, it makes every man who receives it, however illiterate he may be upon other subjects, a wealthy man spiritually, while they who discard it become poverty-stricken in mind, whatever else of mental attainments they may possess. That is the first meaning of our text, God’s testimonies are a heritage of truth to the man who receives them.
The next meaning is that God’s Covenant is our heritage. The word, “testimonies,” may be understood to mean, and it does mean, God’s Covenant. When the Lord Jehovah entered into Covenant with men, He made a testimony to them that He would do this and that—His testimony made the Covenant—and the Covenant was His testimony to men. Now, I can say, and many of you can say with me, I have taken God’s Covenant to be my heritage forever. And what a heritage that Covenant is, dear Friends! This is one of its clauses, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” This is another clause in the Covenant, “I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against Me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned and whereby they have transgressed against Me. And it shall be to Me a name of joy, a praise and an honor before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear all the good that I do unto them: and they shall fear and tremble for all the goodness and for all the prosperity that I procure unto it.”