Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3474
“He delivered me, because He delighted in me.” Psalm 18:19.
THE experience of Believers has much in common. The language in which they are known to express it bears a close resemblance. You may often take the language out of one good man’s mouth and put it into the mouth of another without committing any violence. The words of David will doubtless suit hundreds and thousands of you who fear the Lord. You will be able to lay hold of this sentence, full many of you, I hope, with the hands of appropriation and be enabled, by God the Holy Spirit, to say, as he said, “He delivered me because He delighted in me.”
These words may suggest to us a pleasant fact to sing about—“He delivered me”—a precious Truth of God to think about, “because He delighted in me.” And a proper course to set about—since His delight in me has issued in my deliverance, let my delight in Him produce a response of gratitude! “He delivered me.” Here is—
I. A FACT IN THE LIFE HISTORY OF THE SAINT which may well provoke the gratitude and inspire the song of him who has witnessed such amazing Grace! We need not disentomb the tale of David’s rescue from peril—let us take our own narrative. And how can I invoke the memory of this better than by referring to some points in John Bunyan’s wonderful allegory? As pilgrims to the Celestial City, we have often had to sing, “He delivered me.” You remember well, when you resided in the City of Destruction, you breathed the same atmosphere, followed the same fashions and indulged the same lusts of the flesh that others did. Prone to sin, and prompt to participate in other men’s sins, you mingled with them in their unhallowed pursuits. You were enemies to God and yet you were on good terms with yourselves! You were at a distance from the great Sun of Righteousness and, instead of sighing for the Light of God, you sought satisfaction in darkness. What you once were—an alien from God and a stranger to His House—you would now be, had He not delivered you! It was Divine Grace which made you restless and put it into your heart to be uneasy. You saw that the wrath of God must rest upon the ungodly. You heard a voice in your ears, “Escape; escape for your life! Look not behind you! Flee to the mountains lest you be consumed.” If you have forsaken the drunkard’s haunts, if you have broken off the swearer’s profane tongue, if the pleasures of sin have ceased their fascination, you must ascribe it to your Redeemer and say, “He delivered me,” for it is Grace that has rescued you from the destroyers!
Do you remember the time when you first set out as a pilgrim for the better country? You ran as best you could. Bright hopes and cheery prospects enlivened you as you thought of entering into the Celestial City. But all of a sudden you were bewildered with doubts and fears. You had fallen into the Slough of Despond! In that miserable plight some of you remained for months. It was my misfortune to be there for nearly five years—and I found it a terrible place! Fears of dying haunted us, and equal fears of living. A dread of Hell came over us and a dreary apprehension that we would soon be swallowed up as those that went down alive into the Pit! With what cold shudders, or with what hot tears some of you must recall that unhappy season when you cried with Job, “O, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even unto His seat!” You had become the companion of dragons and of owls, and your soul chose strangling rather than life. It is not so with you now. Your face shines—the oil of joy is upon it! Your throat is no longer hoarse with groaning. You can sing a song to your Well-Beloved touching your Beloved. Who made the change? Why, dear Heart, I am sure you can say, “He delivered me! It was His kind hand that snatched me from the mire, lifted me up out of the horrible Pit, and set my feet upon a rock.”
You have not forgotten, dear Friends—in fact, the felicities of Heaven can never be erased from your memory! O, the weight of that burden which pressed you down when your sins laid heavy on your soul. You walked despondingly
enough along the road. Christian worship had no charms to enliven you. Did you come where God’s people were singing? You said, “I would, but cannot sing.” Or if they prayed, you likewise excused yourself, “I would, but cannot pray.” Your sins were so harassing that they haunted your mind, vexed your brain and terrified your imagination. What schemes to get rid of them, or to ease your heart of conscious guilt, you resorted to! And yet you got worse, rather than better. You tried to condone your past bad works by doing some fresh good works, but their defects were so palpable that they only aggravated your sore. You resorted to ordinances and ceremonies and you discovered that they were mere quackery, a vile empiricism void of healing virtue, but full of deadly opiates! You seemed as if you would be bent double with your sins! You cried, “O God, my sins, my sins, my sins! How can I be delivered from them?”