Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2688
“You have dealt well with Your servant, O LORD, according unto Your Word. Teach me good judgment and knowledge: for I have believed Your Commandments.” Psalm 119:65, 66.
WHEN the Psalmist wrote these words, he was contemplating the goodness of God. In the verse preceding our text, the 64th, he sang, “The earth, O Jehovah, is full of Your mercy!” as if he could not walk abroad without seeing evidences of it, or look upward, or backward, or around him, without everywhere perceiving the Omnipresent goodness of the Most High. Whatever season of the year it is in which we take our walks abroad into the field of Nature, we ought to be in such a condition of mind and heart as to see proofs of the fullness of God’s love everywhere around us, but especially, I think, it should be so in these summer months when the fields are ripening toward the harvest and we see how God is fulfilling His ancient Covenant, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” How thankful we ought to be that the Lord thus remembers the earth and makes it bring forth the corn and everything else that is necessary to supply the needs of men! So let us bless God that the earth is still full of His mercy.
Is our own life in the same condition, or are we strangers to the goodness of God? Is there mercy all around us, yet none for us? Well, let others answer these questions as they may, there are many here present who can reply most emphatically, “No, the earth is full of God’s mercy and we can, each one of us, say to Him, ‘You have dealt well with Your servant, O Lord.’ Though You have had so many others of Your creatures to care for, You have not forgotten poor me. Though I am but the merest atom, dwelling in a world which is, itself, nothing more than a speck when compared with the innumerable worlds that throng Your universe, yet You have not failed to let Your mercy come to me, even to me.”
I have sometimes lighted upon a little flower right in the depths of the forest glades. It seemed as if it were hidden quite away, utterly concealed by the towering trees and yet it bloomed as sweetly as if it had been watched over and cared for by the utmost skill, for somewhere between the branches—I could not tell where—there was a little window through which the sun shone into the heart of that tiny flower, kissing it into perfume, and tinting it with those lovely colors which made it so attractive! All around it, the soil was bare, but this sweet flower flourished all by itself, and so, Brothers and Sisters, if you have lived in the midst of those who have forgotten your God, you have been hidden away in obscurity, yet the Lord has not forgotten you and, somehow—yes, and continually—the beams of His gracious sunlight have come even to you and you must bless and praise and magnify Him to whom you owe all that you have and are! Therefore cheerfully bear witness with the rest of God’s people to this blessed fact and join with the Psalmist in saying, “You have dealt well with Your servant, O Lord, according unto Your Word.”
You may go further and say, “You have dealt well with all Your servants, O Lord, according to Your Word.” David had not always thought so, but he did think so when he came to sum up the total of his life’s experience and to write it down in his diary—for I suppose that the 119th Psalm was made up of the entries in David’s diary as he went along. This was the summary of all that he had experienced, that God had dealt well with him—but as he had not always thought so, he felt that he had been very much misled and mistaken in judgment—and therefore he prayed this prayer: “Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I have believed Your Commandments.”
There will be three things for me to talk about tonight. First, judgment expressed. David expressed his judgment as to how God had dealt with him and very sound and judicious judgment it was—“You have dealt well with Your servant, O Lord, according unto Your Word.” Secondly, I shall have to speak to you about judgment desired—“Teach me good judgment and knowledge.” And, thirdly, I shall tell you about judgment possessed. The Psalmist already possessed a measure of good judgment—he was not altogether left to be as the foolish, for he could truthfully say to the Lord, “I have believed Your Commandments.” He had possessed judgment enough for that and that is one reason why he might expect to have more, for it is an old law of God’s Kingdom, “Whoever has, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance.”
I. First, then, here is David’s JUDGMENT EXPRESSED—“You have dealt well with Your servant, O Lord.”
Looking through his past life, he came to the conclusion, first, that God had dealt with him. It is a very awe-inspiring Truth of God and one that should make us feel that this life is a solemn thing, because in it God deals with us. We thought that we had been having dealings with our fellow men and so we have, but, all the while, there has been Another who has also been dealing with us. And we say, “Under all, and over all, and within all, have been the dealings of His Providence.” Or, rather, let us say, “the dealings of God, Himself,” so that we can personally say, “You have dealt with Your servant.” It will not be strange if we add, “How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the House of God and this is the gate of Heaven. Surely the Lord is in this place.”