Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2775
“Moreover by them Your servant is warned: and in keeping them there is great reward.” Psalm 19:11.
DAVID was constantly singing the praises of God’s Word, although, as I have often reminded you, he had only a small portion of the Scriptures compared with the complete Bible which we possess. If, then, it had pleased God that the Canon of Revelation should have been closed in David’s day, it would, by the aid of His Spirit, have been even then a sufficient Light of God to lead the saints of God into the way of holiness. You would be very sorry if the Pentateuch and the earliest Historical Books should be all that you had of the Scriptures, yet they are, evidently, so rich, so full, so instructive, that they were all that David needed for the practical purposes of a holy life! Never allow anybody to make you depreciate the Old Testament. No part of the Bible is to be set up above the rest, or to be treated as of secondary importance. “All Scripture is given by Inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”
So I gather, from what David says, that if we had no more Books of the Bible than he had, we should still possess all inestimable treasure for which we ought daily to bless and praise the name of the Lord. But now that we have the complete Revelation of the will of God, as contained in the Old and the New Testaments, we ought to rejoice with exceedingly great joy. We have a Bible which is large enough to be a perfect library and which is also so compact that we can carry it about with us wherever we go! It is exactly the right size and it is just right in all other respects. It is just adapted to every individual in the world and it is also the most fit Book for any nation to use as an everyday guide as to its morals, its laws and its conduct in relation to both God and men.
There are two things mentioned in the text which made the Scriptures very dear to David. The first is that they had warned him against evil—“by them Your servant is warned.” And the second is that obedience to the Scriptures had brought him a great reward—“and in keeping them there is great reward.”
I. First, then, THE SCRIPTURES HAD WARNED DAVID AGAINST EVIL.
We are so dull and so foolish that unless we are taught of God the Holy Spirit, we really know nothing as we ought to know it. Yet we are so headstrong and so obstinate that if we are not Divinely checked, we run with heedless impetuosity into all manner of evil. We need to be goaded on to everything that is good, but we need to be held in with a tight rein, or we shall plunge into many things that are evil. Even when we do not willfully choose the wrong, we seem to run into it by a sort of natural tendency—and we find ourselves bogged down before we know where we are. If, however, the Scripture is made to be our constant companion and guide, we shall be saved from many mistakes into which, otherwise, we are sure to fall. Where we should have rushed on madly to our destruction, we shall find ourselves suddenly stopped and we shall hear a Voice behind us saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” And, through giving heed to that warning Voice, we shall turn back from the broad road of our own choosing to the narrow way of God’s choice.
God’s Word warned us, first, concerning our soul’s disease and its remedy To some of us, our first warning concerning the evil of our nature came from the Scriptures. There are some persons who must, very early in life, have been made aware of the evil of their nature. I mean persons with a hot, impetuous, passionate temperament, or those with a strong animal tendency and others who were brought up in the midst of vice, and who themselves eagerly plunged into it. One
would think that such people ought to be able to see that they are not what they should be. But there have been others with a gentle nature who have been trained up in the midst of piety. Even without the Grace of God, they would not be likely to become vicious like those to whom I have referred. They have also, through helpful training, become honest, upright and amiable. There is everything about them that is pleasing and beautiful. They go to church, or to the meeting house, and they join with others in making confession of sin, yet, somehow, they do not seem to realize that the confession applies to themselves exactly as it stands, for they are not openly as sinful as others are. There are some people in such a condition of natural excellence that if it had not been for the Word of God, they would not have known what evil was sleeping within their hearts!
A leopard may have been kept under restraint from the time it was a cub and it may appear to be perfectly harmless. But if it should taste blood, its real fierceness will soon be seen. You may walk over a grassy hill and think yourself perfectly secure, yet, underneath, there may be a slumbering volcano, liable to break out at any moment. Everywhere about us there is that which flatters us and makes us think that we are better than we are, but, by the Word of God, we are faithfully warned that there is a sink of iniquity within our soul—a black and fetid spring—a foul generator of everything that is evil in the very fountain of our nature! What a blessing it is for us to be warned of that evil, lest we should go on dreaming that all was right and never find out the truth till we were past conversion—past the possibility of being renewed because we would have entered that other world where hope and mercy can never come! What a blessing it is that God’s Word warns us concerning the disease and tells us of the remedy for it—warns us that we are lost and reveals to us the glorious Truth of God concerning the Savior who has come to seek and to save that which was lost!