Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3409
“The young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they who seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.” Psalm 34:10.
THE young lions are very strong. They are as yet in the freshness of their youth and yet their strength does not always suffice to keep them supplied. The young lions are very crafty—they understand how to waylay their game and leap upon them with a sudden spring at unawares, and yet, with all their craftiness, they howl for hunger in the woods. The young lions are very bold and furious, very unscrupulous. They are not stayed from any deed of depredation and yet for all that, freebooters as they are, they sometimes lack and suffer hunger. These are just the type of many men in the world—they are strong men, they are cunning men, they are thoroughly up to the times—smart, sharp men. If anybody could be well supplied, one would think they should be. But how many of them go to bankruptcy and ruin and, with all their cunning, they are too cunning! And with all their unscrupulousness, they manage, at last, full often, to come to an ill end. They do lack and suffer hunger. But here are the people of God—they are regarded as simpletons, such simpletons as to seek the Lord instead of adopting the maxims of universal worldly wisdom, namely, “Seek yourself!” They have given up what is called the first law of human nature—namely, self-seeking, self-pleasing, self-serving—and have come to seek the Lord, to seek to magnify Him. And what comes of their simplicity? “They shall not want any good thing.” Notwithstanding their lack of power, their want of cunning and the check which conscience often puts upon them, so that they cannot do what others can to enrich themselves—yet for all that, they have a fortune ensured to them! They “shall not want any good thing.”
Let us look at this text, now, and together consider it thus—first, the seeking of the Lord which is here intended. And then following upon that, the promise that is given upon such seeking.
I. The Seeking of the Lord Here Intended
We must be particular and very precise about this. The promise is so rich that we wish to win it fully, but we do not wish to be dishonest. We would not take a Word of God that does not belong to us, lest we should deceive ourselves and be guilty of robbing God. We must go carefully and jealously, here, and must search ourselves to see if in very deed and truth we are such as reallyseek the Lord.
Now, the term to “seek the Lord,” I may say, is the description of the life of the Christian. When he lives as he should, his whole life is seeking the Lord! It is with this he begins. “Behold, he prays,” that is, he seeks the Lord. He has begun to be conscious of his sin. He is seeking pardon of the Lord. He has begun to be aware of his danger—he is seeking salvation in the Lord. He is now aware of his powerlessness and he is looking for strength to the Lord. Those deep convictions, those cries and tears, that repenting and humbling and, above all, those acts of simple confidence in which he casts himself upon the great Atonement made upon Calvary’s bloody tree—those are all acts of seeking the Lord! Now, perhaps some of you have got no farther than this. Well, you shall have your proportion of blessing, according to your strength. You shall have your share in it, little as you are. He will give to His children at the table their portion, as well as to those who have grown to manhood.
After a man has attained unto eternal life by confiding in the Lord Jesus, he then goes on to seek the Lord in quite another way. No wonder! Since he has found the Lord, or rather has been found of Him, and yet he still presses on to apprehend Him of whom he has been already apprehended! He still presses forward, seeking the Lord, and he seeks the Lord thus. He seeks, now, to know the Lord’s mind, the Lord’s Law and will. “Show me what You would have me to do,” he says. “Lord, I went by my own wit, once, and I brought myself into a dark forest—I lost myself—I was at Hell’s brink and You did save me. Now, Lord, guide and direct me. Be pleased to teach me. Open my lips when I speak. Guide my hands when I act. I wait at Your feet, feeling that—
“For holiness no strength have I, My strength is at Your feet to lie.”
The man now seeks the Lord by daily and constant prayer, seeking that he may be upheld, guided, constrained in paths of righteousness and restrained from the ways of sin. He becomes a seeker of the Lord after sanctification, as once he was after justification. And then he becomes a seeker of the Lord in a further sense. He seeks to enjoy the Lord’s love and His gracious fellowship and communion. He seeks to get near in reverent friendship to his Lord. He now longs to grow up in the likeness of Christ, that his conversation with the Father and the Son may be more close, more sweet, more continuous. He feels that God is his Father and that he is no longer at a distance from Him in one sense, for He is made near by the blood of the Cross. Yet sometimes he is oppressed with a sense of his old evil heart of unbelief and in departure from the living God—and he cries out, “Draw me nearer to Yourself!” In fact, his prayer is always—