Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2432
“I kept myself from my iniquity.” Psalm 18:23.
In our reading we had a very wonderful description of God’s delivering mercy towards His servant David. He was very peculiarly tried in the court of Saul. He deserved so much of the king that it was doubly difficult for David to be treated so badly. He had been the deliverer of his country when he slew Goliath, yet he was hunted as if he had been the grossest of malefactors. He had to flee for his life like a partridge upon the mountains—and all the while, no doubt— Saul and his partisans accused him of all manner of evil. There was scarcely any bad thing which they did not attribute to David! But he was upright before God and he dared to challenge the investigation of the Most High, for he was sincere and true to the core. He proved by his conduct that he was so, for when Saul was in his hands, on two memorable occasions when he might readily have taken his life, he refused to do so. He would not put forth his hand against the Lord’s anointed and, in great Grace, in his own good time, God was pleased to deliver His servant.
If men blow out the candle of a Christian’s reputation, God will light it again! If He does not do so in this life, remember that at the Resurrection there will be a resurrection of reputations as well as of bodies—“Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.” It is, after all, of very small account what is said by men whose breath is in their nostrils. “They say. What do they say? Let them say.” Let them say till they have done saying—it little matters what they say! Yet, to a sensitive spirit, like that of David, the tongue is a very sharp instrument—it cuts like a razor and pierces, even, to the bones. He felt, therefore, the slander of many, and was sometimes greatly troubled by it. However, God was pleased to work a very marvelous deliverance for him. It seemed as if the Lord would sooner shake the earth to atoms and crush the arches of Heaven than fail to deliver His servant! He will still do so, depend upon it! “He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.”
David attributes his Providential deliverance to the mercy of God by which he had been kept clear in his conduct. “I kept myself from my iniquity.” Whatever you do, if you do right, God will see you through, but, whoever you may be, if you turn aside to crooked ways, you will soon fall into a bog. If you try to carve for yourself, you will probably cut your fingers. He who thinks that he can do better by suppressing truth, or by speaking lies, or by acting contrary to the dictates of his conscience will find that he has made a great mistake. Trust so in God as to hold to your integrity. “Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you.” Ponder the path of your feet and God will bring you through as surely as He is alive, which is saying much more than if I said as surely as you are alive, for, as the Lord lives, before whom we stand, He will not forsake the righteous, nor cast off them that serve Him faithfully!
This is the passage we have to consider, “I kept myself from my iniquity.” Here is, first, a personal danger—“my iniquity.” And, secondly, here is a special guard—“I kept myself.” And then, thirdly, here is a happy result. David could say, as he looked back upon his life, “I kept myself from my iniquity.” There was no boasting in this declaration, but as his enemies accused him falsely, like an honest man, he defended himself, for he was truthfully able to say, “I kept myself from my iniquity.”
I. Well now, here is, first, A PERSONAL DANGER—“my iniquity.”
This is a dreadful possession to have in the house! A man had better have a cage of cobras than have an iniquity, yet we have, each of us, to deal at home with some special form of sin. It is said that there is a skeleton in every closet. I do not know whether that is true, but I do know that there is something very much allied to a skeleton, that is, the body of this death with which we all have to deal—and it takes a special shape in each good man. There is some particular sin which he may call “my iniquity.” Not only is there the general iniquity which affects the whole race, but each man has his own particular form of it—“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, everyone, to his own way.” There is a general sin, but there is a particularity in it, too—each man has his own way of sinning, so that he can speak of “my iniquity.”
Let us think of the particular form of iniquity with which some of us have to do. It takes its specialty, perhaps, from our natural constitution. He who judges all men alike does them an injustice. There are some who have but little tendency to a particular form of evil, but they have a very great inclination towards some other sin. Some are sanguine—they are expecting great things and they fall into the sin of expecting to drink sweet waters from the cisterns of this world. There are some of quite another temperament who are inclined to despondency, perhaps to suspicion—they may fall into mistrust, or various forms of unbelief and even into despair which will be very grievous to the God who is always gracious. There are some men who, from their very parentage, are inclined to drunkenness or to unchastity. There are others, favored by God with a godly ancestry, who, if they were left to themselves, would not probably fall into either of these forms of sin, yet they might be proud of their own integrity and proud of their own uprightness—and is not pride as great a sin as those more open transgressions? Depend on it, my dear Friend, you have some tendency, peculiar to yourself, and there is a special point where you lie open to the attacks of temptation! Happy will that man be who so knows himself that he sets a double watch against that postern gate through which the adversary is apt to creep in the dark. Peculiar constitutions may lead to special forms of sin and it behooves the godly man to keep himself from his own iniquity!