Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2728
“From the end of the earth will I cry unto You, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the Rock that is higher than I.” Psalm 61:2.
IT is supposed by many that David wrote this Psalm at the time when he fled from his son Absalom. That trial was one of the most grievous of all the afflictions of David’s greatly-checkered life. It was but a little thing for him to be hunted by Saul like a partridge upon the mountains. It was a small matter for him to have to take refuge with Achish, and to sojourn among the Philistines, an alien from his mother’s children. No, all the afflictions of his preceding life were but light trials compared with the revolt of Absalom. He was his father’s favorite son, one in whom his soul delighted, for he was a comely personage in his outward appearance and he had a lordly and kingly bearing—he was David’s darling, although, in his moral character, utterly unworthy of this distinction. This child of his, who was the nearest to his heart, had the greatest opportunity to cut him to the quick. Those things which we allow to take the chief place in our bosoms have the most power to give us grief.
Absalom, first of all, kills his brother, and then, by dint of courtesy and such pretended generosity, as demagogues always know how to use, won the affections of David’s people from their rightful monarch. And then he blew the trumpet and set himself up as king in opposition to his father. No, more than this, he sought his father’s life! It was not sufficient for him to seize the crown, but he longed to murder the head that should have worn it. His father was driven from his house and was made to cross, with a few attendants, over the brook Kedron and to go away from the sanctuary of God. He had to dwell in the midst of a forest and sleep among his armed men and, at other times, to camp out upon the open plain. Who can tell the grief of this monarch? Wave after wave had rolled over him. He had often said that he desired to be like the sparrow and the swallow, dwelling beneath the eaves of God’s sanctuary—and now his great trouble is that he is driven far away from God’s House to what he calls “the end of the earth.”
As he thought of the cause of his exile, how grieved must he have been! For his son, his darling son, the son of his heart, the son whom he had pardoned, the son whom he had honored, the son whom he had recalled from the banishment he richly deserved—this son had struck him. We know that old quotation from Shakespeare, which is repeated many and many a time, and is always true—
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child!”
Yet here was one who was not only unthankful, but who drove his father into exile and sought his life! David always clung to this child of his even in the time of his greatest iniquity. When at last he was compelled to send out his army against the rebel, you remember how he commanded Joab and Abishai and Ittai, saying, “Deal gently for my sake with the young man, even with Absalom.” And when he was killed, you know how David lamented over him, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” Now, from the very fact that David loved this young man so much, his sorrows must have been peculiarly poignant. If a man can bring his mind to thrust out from his bosom one who has proved ungrateful, then half the battle is over. If love can cut the link—can say, “I have done with you, I will reckon you now no more my child”—then the heart steels itself against its deepest sor-
row, and the arrow rattles only against the harness. But it was not so with David—he still opened wide his breast to his unworthy son.
Let us who stand in the relation of children to our parents, remember that it is in our power to give them the greatest possible grief—and yet would we not, each of us, sooner die than that those who brought us forth should have to lament on account of us? Yet, haply, there are some of you who are bringing your parents’ gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. O you who are cursing your father’s God—who are desecrating the day that your parents reckon to be holy—you who despise the Gospel which your father and mother love, remember that you are not only grieving God, but you are grieving your parents also! Push them not into the tomb before their time, lest their ashes testify against you and lest, in the hour of your trouble, when your children treat you in like manner, you should have to learn the bitterness of rearing in your own bosom the serpent that shall sting you with the deadliest venom! Let each of us take heed that we deal gently with our parents and always treat kindly those who have tenderly fostered us.
With this preface, let us now turn to our text, and I think we shall understand it all the better from this little reference to David’s history. There are three Truths of God here. The first is, that prayer is always available— ’ ‘From the end of the earth will I cry unto You, when my heart is overwhelmed.” The second Truth is, that sometimes even the Believer cannot get to Christ as he could wish, but that then there is a way provided for leading him to Christ—“Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I.” Then, in the third place, we shall consider Christ under the aspect of a Rock that is higher than we are.