Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3445
“I will cry unto God Most High; unto God that performs all things form.” Psalm 57:2.
DAVID was in the Cave Adullam. He had fled from Saul, his remorseless foe, and had found shelter in the clefts of the rock. In the beginning of this Psalm he rings the alarm bell—and very loud is the sound of it. “Be merciful unto me,” and then the clapper hits the other side of the bell. “Be merciful unto me.” He utters his Miserere again and again. “My soul trusts in You; yes, in the shadow of Your wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities have passed by.” Thus he solaces himself by faith in his God. Faith is always an active Grace. Its activity, however, is first of all manifested in prayer. This precedes any action. “I will cry,” he says, “unto God Most High.” You know how graciously he was preserved in the cave, even when Saul was close at his heels. Among the winding intricacies of those caverns he was enabled to conceal himself, though his enemy, with armed men, was close at hand. The Targum has a note upon this which may or may not be true. It states that a spider spun its web over the door of that part of the cave where David was concealed. The legend is not unlike one told of another king at a later time. It may have been true of David, and it is quite as likely to be true of the other. If so, David would, in such a passage as this, have directed his thoughts to the little acts God had performed for him which had become great in their results. If God makes a spider spin a web to save His servant’s life, David traces his deliverance not to the spider, but to the wonder-working Jehovah! And he says, “I will cry unto God Most High, unto God that performs all things for me.” It is delightful to see these exquisite prayers come from holy men in times of extreme distress. As the sick oyster makes the pearl, and not the healthy one, so does it seem as if the child of God brings forth gems of prayer in affliction more pure, brilliant and sparkling than any that he produces in times ofjoy and exultation.
Our text is capable of three meanings. To these three meanings we shall call your attention briefly. “Unto God who performs all things for me.” First, there is Infinite Providence. As it stands, the words, “all things,” you perceive, have been added by the translators. Not that they were mistaken in so doing, for the unlimited expression, “God that performs for me,” allows them to supply the omission without any violation of the sense. Secondly, there is inviolable faithfulness, as we know that David here referred to God’s working out the fulfillment of the promises He had made. We sang just now of the sweet promise of His Grace as the performing God. I think Dr. Watts borrowed that expression from this verse. Thirdly, there is a certainty of ultimate completeness. The original has for its root the word, “finishing,” and now working it out, it means a God that performs or, as it were, perfects and accomplishes all things concerning me. Whatever there is in His promise or Covenant that I may need, He will perfect for me. To begin with—
I. The Marvelous Providence
The text, as it stands, speaks of a service—“I will cry unto God Most High; unto God that performs all things for me.” “All things,” that is to say, in everything that I have to do, I am but an instrument in His hands—it is God who does it for me. The Christian has no right to have anything to do for which he cannot ask God’s help. No, he should have no business which he could not leave with his God. It is his to work and to exercise prudence, but it is his to call in the aid of God to his work and to leave the care of it with the God who cares for him. Any work in which he cannot ask Divine co-operation, the care of which he cannot cast upon God is unfit for him to be engaged in. Depend upon it, if I cannot say of the whole of my life, “God performs all things for me,” there is sin somewhere and evil lurks in the disposition thereof. If I am living in such a state that I cannot ask God to carry out for me the enterprises I have embarked in, and entirely rely on His Providence for the issues, then what I cannot ask Him to do for me, neither have I any right to do for myself!
Let us think, therefore, of the whole of our ordinary life and apply the text to it. Should we not, each morning, cry unto God to give us help through the day? Though we are not going out to preach. Though we are not going up to the assembly for worship. Though it is only our ordinary business, that ordinary business ought to be a consecrated thing! Opportunities for God’s service should be sought in our common avocations—we may glorify God very much therein. On the other hand, our souls may suffer serious damage, we may do much mischief to the cause of Christ in the ordinary walk of any one day. It is for us, then, to begin the day with prayer—to continue all through the day in the same spirit and to close the day by commending whatever we have done to that same Lord. Any success attending that day, if it is real success, is of God who gives it to us! “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it,” is a statement applicable to the whole of Christian life! It is vain to rise early and sit up late, and eat the bread of carefulness, for so He gives His Beloved sleep. If there is any true blessing, such blessing, as Jabez craved, when he said, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed,” it must come from the God of Heaven—it can come from nowhere else. Cry then, Christian, concerning your common life to God! Say continually, “I will cry unto God Most High; unto God that performs all things for me.”