Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2521
“Turn away my eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken me in Your way.” Psalm 119:37.
David, when he wrote these words, was in downright earnest. There were times with him when he grew lukewarm and cold and then we remember that he soon fell into grievous sin. But at the time when he was penning this verse, his spirit was lively, active and energetic—then it was that he prayed thus carefully about himself—“Turn away my eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken me in Your way.” If you read the preceding verse, you will notice that he was thinking of the reality and depth and power of true religion, for he prayed, “Incline my heart unto Your testimonies and not to covetousness,” by which he evidently wished that his whole soul might be set upon things Divine, that, as misers seek after gold and store it up, and feast their eyes upon it, so he might be eager after the things of God and might store them up, making them to be his heavenly delicacies, his peculiar pleasure.
Dear Friends, you know as well as I do that there are many sorts of Christians. I am sorry to say that there are some nominal Christians who are no credit to Christianity—they bear the name of Christians and though I will not say that they are dead—yet certainly they are very sickly and seem ready to die! They stand among the people of God and their names are put down in the Church Book, but if they are spiritually alive, theirs is a very feeble form of life. Their heart is not in God’s ways. They are active and energetic when they get into the shop, but they are half asleep when they are in the sanctuary. They leave “footprints on the sands of time” when they are devoting their attention to politics, but when they come to the things of God, they tread so lightly that we cannot tell that they have passed that way! It seems to me to be a horrible thing that many a man should give 15 ounces out of the 16 to the world and yet that he should label himself a Christian because of that one odd ounce which he pretends to give to God! The major part of his being—his very self— runs to turn the mill-wheel of daily care and toil, but there is just a dribble that is supposed to be saved up for Christ.
Let it not be so with you, or with me, dear Friends, but let us pray that our hearts may be inclined to the things of God—that the whole force of our nature may run in a heavenly, spiritual, gracious, holy direction—and that thus we may be epistles written by God’s own right hand, “known and read of all men.” It is only a man who is in this state of spiritual health and activity who will pray such a prayer as that of our text. It is only he who gets to be so careful about his eyes that he will not look upon sin—and so careful about his daily ways—that he is lively and quick in the things of God.
Hoping and believing that I am addressing many such earnest active Christians, I suggest that we, dear Brothers and Sisters, consider this double prayer. First, it seems to me that David, here, prays for deadness in one direction. ’ ‘Lord, make me dead to vanity.” And, secondly, he prays for life in another direction. “Quicken me in Your way Lord, make me alive to those things that are true and real, lasting and eternal!”
I. First, DAVID, HERE, PRAYS FOR DEADNESS IN ONE DIRECTION deadness to the world, that he may be so dead to it that he will not even look at it. “Turn away my eyes from beholding vanity.” He wants to be so clean delivered from the love of worldly things that he may not count them worth even a glance. So far from pursuing them with his feet, or laboring for them with his hands, or going after them with his heart, he thinks them not worth a thought and prays God of His Grace to turn away his eyes from even looking upon them.
What do you think the Psalmist means, here, by, vanity I think he probably means four things, or one thing which may be seen under four aspects. Many a Christian prays, “Lord, turn away my eyes from beholding vanity,” that is, frivolity. To some men, life is all trifling—they are the butterflies of God’s garden, alighting on flowers, but never sucking the honey out of them. They just dance their little hour in the sunbeam of existence, as the gnats do on a summer’s evening. They come, they dance, they die—and that is the end of them so far as this life is concerned. Even in our way there will frequently come frivolous things. I do not say that Christians are to disregard all trifles, or that there are not things, very trifling in themselves, which may be sanctified and used for purposes of restoration and recreation, and so be made beneficial to us.
But I do say this—if a man, calling himself a Christian, should live for mere frivolity—if to him life should be all play and no work, a daydream and not a battle. If he should make his life to be, as the poet puts it—
“Like ocean into tempest tossed, To waft a feather, or to drown a fly,”