Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2823
“For by You I have run through a troop; and by My God have Heaped over a wall” Psalm 18:29.
IT sometimes puzzles the unenlightened Believer to find that the Psalms often relate both to David and to David’s Lord. Many a young Believer has found himself quite bewildered when reading a Psalm—he has scarcely been able to make out how a passage could be true of both David and of the Lord Jesus Christ, “our superior King.” This he cannot understand. But he who has grown far enough in Grace to understand the meaning of conformity to Christ sees that it is not without a high and heavenly design that the Holy Spirit has presented to us the experience of Jesus in that model of experience through which David passed.
My dear Brothers and Sisters, we all know as a matter of doctrine, but we have not all proved as a matter of sweet experience that we are to be like our Head. We must be like He upon earth, like He despised and rejected by man in our generation. We must be like He, bearers of the Cross. Yes, we must not shrink, in any way from what is meant by being crucified with Him and buried with Him in order that we may know, in later days, how to rise with Him, how to ascend with Him and how to sit with Him upon His Throne. No, I will go further—even in this life the Believer is to have a conformity to Christ in His present glories, for we are even now raised up together with Christ and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus! In Him, also, we have obtained the inheritance, for we are complete in Him who is the Head of all principality and power. There is such a conformity between Christ and His people that everything that is said of Christ may, in some measure, be said of His people. Whatever Christ has been, they should be or have been. Whatever He has done, He has done for them and they shall do the like, after some fashion or other. Whatever He has attained unto, they shall also enjoy. If He reigns, they shall reign, and if He is Heir of a universal monarchy, they shall also be kings and priests unto God and shall reign with Him forever and ever!
Thus the riddle becomes solved, the parable is expounded, the dark saying of David’s day shines clearly in Gospel light! You can see not only how it is possible that the same Psalm can relate to David and to David’s Lord, but that there is a Divine mystery and a most rich and precious lesson couching beneath the fact that the Holy Spirit has chosen to set forth the doings, the sufferings and the triumphs of Christ under the figure or model of the doings, sufferings and victories of the son of Jesus! You will not, therefore, be surprised to hear me remark that this text has relation to Christ and the Believer, too. The doings and triumphs of Jesus must, accordingly, first engage our attention and, in the second place, observe that we have here a picture of the wondrous doings of faith when the Believer is enabled to triumph over every earthly ill and over every human opposition—“By you I have run through a troop; and by my God have I leaped over a wall.”
I. Let us take the first sentence WITH REGARD TO CHRIST.
“By You I have run through a troop.”How accurately Christ’s enemies are here described! By their number they were a troop. The Captain of our salvation, although single-handed in the combat, had to fight with a legion of foes. It was not a mere duel. It is true there was but one on the Victor’s side, but there was an innumerable host in antagonism to Him. Not only the Prince of Darkness, but all the powers and the principalities thereof came against Him. Not merely sin in the mass, but sin in daily temptations of every kind and sin of every shade and form—not only from earth a host of
human despisers and human opponents, but a yet greater host from the lowest depths of Hell! These, from their number, are well compared to a troop.
Nor does this expression merely describe their number, but also their discipline. They were “a troop.” A crowd of men is a great number, but it is not a troop. A crowd may be far sooner put to route than a troop. A troop is a trained company that knows how to march and marshal itself—and to stand firm under attack. It was even so with Christ’s enemies. They were a crowd and a mob, but they were also a troop, marshaled by that skillful and crafty leader, the Prince of Darkness. They stood firm and were well disciplined in a close-knit body—they were not broken. As though they were but one man, they sustained the shock of Christ’s attack and marched against Him, hoping for victory. In such a character, His opponents still appear. However well you might discipline a crowd of men, yet they would not become a troop unless they also had been trained for warfare. A troop means a body of well-disciplined men, all of them prepared to fight and understanding how to make war. Thus, all Christ’ s enemies were well trained. There was the archfiend of Hell, who, in hundreds of battles against the Lord’s elect in the olden time, had gained a thorough knowledge of all the weak points of manhood and understood how to temper his attack—and wherein lay the greatest chances of victory. After him, came all the fiends of the Pit—and these were all well exercised, each of them mighty, of giant stature like Goliath—all of them strong to do great exploits with any man less than God, however mighty that man might be!