Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2508
“He will beautify the meek with salivation.” Psalm 149:4.
I FIND that the text bears other interpretations. I will mention two of them. It might be read—and I think correctly—“He will beautify the afflicted with deliverance.” Let me speak about that meaning first of all, for it is worth retaining. God’s own people are frequently made to mourn. Their Lord takes pleasure in them, but yet, for their good, He often sends them grief. At times they are distressed and their enemies appear to triumph over them. They are brought into sore straits and burdened and surrounded with difficulties, but, though “many are the afflictions of the righteous,” “the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.”
The day will come, dear Friend, when your cheeks, all fouled with weeping, shall be washed and made fair to look upon. Your eyes may be weary with waiting and watching, and red with weeping, but that weeping shall endure only for a night. “Joy comes in the morning,” as surely as the morning comes after the night! Bear your sorrows bravely, for they are appointed by your Heavenly Father in supreme wisdom. Bear them joyfully, for they will bring forth to you the peaceable fruits of righteousness. You shall not be losers by your trials, you shall be gainers, and when your face has been washed by the rolling billows of the briny wave, you shall lift up your head and your countenance shall seem more beautiful than if it had not been thus submerged. You shall come up from your sorrows like the sheep from the washing in the days of the shearing. You shall be made white as snow through these very trials which now so sorely distress you. Therefore, I say, anticipate the joys of the future and let not the grief of the present quite swallow you up! Think not so much of the stormy sea that you traverse today as of the sunny shore upon which you soon shall stand, never to be tempest-tossed again!
There may be at this moment but a step between you and Heaven—you cannot tell how soon you may get away from all that worries you—you do not know how near you have come to the gate of pearl. Oh, did you know it—did you know that within a month your hands shall strike the harps of joy and wave the palm branches of victory, and the pure white raiment shall be about you, and the immortal crown shall deck your brow—did you but know all this, you would very patiently plod on through the few weeks of trial that would remain to you here! Remember that you are going Home and that your home of bliss is eternal! Therefore, comfort one another with the words of our text as they are thus rendered—“He shall beautify the afflicted with deliverance.” You shall come again rejoicing, for “the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
Another rendering of our text which also seems to be accurate, is this—“He will beautify the meek with victory” This is a very wonderful expression. In this world, as a rule, it is not the meek who appear to get the victory—they are trod on and trod down, and a meek-spirited man is often much despised among his fellow men. Therefore, when Moses writes of himself, “The man Moses was very meek,” I do not see the least reason why he should not have written it, though many think it would have been impossible. But, indeed, in that age and now, also, it is not self-praise but rather self-humiliationto confess that you are meek! When a man is not willing to go to war when others clamor for it. When the sacred honor of this dignified country needs that we dip our spears in blood, it is with a sneer that a man is called “white-livered and meek.” And if he, himself, were to say, “Yes, I am meek,” there would be no pridein that confession, for the most of men would count that he was confessing to a weakness! Therefore I think that Moses might deliberately write, “the man Moses was very meek,” for nobody would accord him any honor for such a declaration in that age and not very much, even, in this age, for menhave not yet come to value meekness as Godvalues it, but still look upon it as a kind of cowardice. They like a man who goes about the world with his fist always doubled, ready to knock down everybody who dares to think that the braggart is not the king of all his fellows. They admire the great hero who will not have anything said or done against his superlative dignity and, although that pride is earthly, sensual, devilish, yet there are many who admire it. And when it goes by the name of “British pluck,” then, probably, “a mean-spirited man” is the mildest appellation that they give to one who is really meek!
Now, the Lord, seeing that those who are truly meek would have to battle for it, and would be persecuted, and even cast out by their fellows, has given them this gracious promise, that, “He will beautify the meek with victory.” The victory of the man who gives a kiss for a blow is not the thing desired by most men, today, but the Lord will beautify the meek with victory! The turning of the cheek, instead of rendering rafting for railing, does not appear to give the promise of victory, but the promise is true, “He will beautify the meek with victory.” In the day when our King’s white horse shall be brought forth from its stable and the meekest of all men, clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, shall ride forth at the head of the heavenly armies, the meek of the earth shall follow Him on their white horses, too, for that shall be the true triumph which Jehovah, the King of Kings, shall give to them at the last! Inasmuch as they have little victory set to their account among their fellow men, they shall have it in that Day when angels, principalities and powers shall look down with delight upon the conquest accorded to gentleness—and sing and clap their hands with holy exultation! Therefore, Beloved, bear and forbear, be gentle and lowly, remembering this blessed promise, “He will beautify the meek with victory.”