Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2527
“I said unto the LORRD, You are my God: hear the voice of my supplications, O Lord. O God, the Lord, the strength of my salvation, You have covered my head in the day of battle. I know that the Lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted and the right of the poor. Surely the righteous shall give thanks unto Your name: the upright shall dwell in Your Presence.” Psalm 140: 6,7,12,13.
This Psalm was written by David when he was sorely vexed by many adversaries. These adversaries were bent upon his destruction—they could not bear that the son of Jesse should be favored of God and that he should come to the throne—so they set their wits to work to invent all manner of slanders against him. They misconstrued his actions, they misrepresented his motives. They spat the very venom of asps from their mouths against him and, at the same time, they said to one another, “If we can lead him to do wrong. If we can, somehow or other, entrap him, either in his speech, or in his private character, or in his public actions, then we shall have a weapon wherewith we can smite him.” The ungodly are fully aware that slander is, after all, a very dangerous weapon to handle and, like the Australian boomerang, it is very apt to come back to the man who throws it. Stones, hurled into the air, often fall upon the head of the thrower, and slander often recoils upon those who utter it. So, if they can but get a trthflaccusation against a man of God, then they are exceedingly glad. Slander is like shooting at a man with only powder, or with very small shot that can sting, but cannot kill. But, oh, if they can discover some questionable action of the man, or some decided wrongdoing, then they can load their rifles with bullets and have something deadly to fire at the righteous!
David was exceedingly troubled by all this malice on the part of his enemies. He was a man who would have liked to go through the world at peace with everybody. Even when Saul tried to hunt him to the death, you remember that he would not lift his hand against his adversary even when he might have slain him. When, at night, he stood looking at his sleeping foe, and Abishai said to him, “God has delivered your enemy into your hands this day: now, therefore, let me smite him, I pray you, with the spear even to the earth at once, and I will not smite him the second time.” David answered, “Destroy him not: for who can stretch forth his hand against the Lord’s anointed, and be guiltless?” And when David and his men were in the sides of the great cave at Engedi, Saul came in to sleep awhile and he was, again, in David’s power, but David did not touch him, save only that he cut off a piece of the skirt of the king’s robe that he might show him, afterwards, how completely he was in his servant’s hands. It is peculiarly trying to a man who is thus patient and long-suffering to be incessantly compassed about with false accusations and manifold temptations. David said of his adversaries, “They compassed me about; they compassed me about like bees,” stinging him here, and stinging him there, and stinging him wherever they could!
I want you to notice how this man of God acted in this trying time. He betook himself to his knees—he began to pray, “Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man: preserve me from the violent man.” And again, in the next Psalm, he said, “Lord, I cry unto You: make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice, when I cry unto You.” He found his remedy for all the stings of falsehood in drawing near to the living God! He was a wise man, thus, to bathe his wounds in that bath which alone could take the venom out of them, by a prayerfully drawing near to the Most High. And he mingled great faith with his prayer. When trying to expound this Psalm, I was much struck with the positive way in which David speaks all through it. Notice that sixth verse—“I said unto the Lord, You are my God.” That is a grand way to talk! And then, further on, in the 12th verse—“I know that the Lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted.” He has no question about the matter, no hesitation. He does not say, “I hope He will,” but, “I know He will, I am confident of it.” And that makes him say, in the last verse, “Surely”—he felt so certain about it that he could say, “Surely the righteous shall give thanks unto Your name.”
It is a blessed thing when faith rises as tribulations increase. A little faith may do for a skirmish with the enemy, but you need the full assurance of faith for a pitched battle. When the waters are up to the ankles, a little faith may enable you to stand. But when you get to “waters to swim in,” then you need, in childlike confidence, to cast yourself entirely upon the stream of Divine Love, or else, assuredly, you will sink. May God be pleased to increase the faith of all of us who believe in Jesus! If we are tempted and tried very sorely, may the Great High Priest, whom we cannot see, but who always sees us and foresees every danger to which we are exposed, pray for us till He can say to each one of us, as He did to Peter, “Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not.” For, if faith keeps her proper place and prayer does her duty, there will be a way for the child of God to escape from every trial.