The Sure Mercies of David Part IV

                         (a sequel to the Christmas Lesson)

                                          Luke 1:23-38

                              II Samuel 23:5; Haggai 2:5-9

                                       January 19, 2025

1e, 226

 

I am spinning this lesson from the last words of David, “....this is all my

salvation, and all my desire,” in II Samuel 23:5 which I began last week,

into “...the desire of all nations  shall come” of Haggai 2:7

 

Let me read these passages:

 

David said “........God....hath made with me an everlasting coventant,

ordered in all things, and sure, for this is all my salvation and all

my desire.”  ( II Samuel 23:5)

 

5 According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came

   out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not.

6 For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and

   I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land;

7 And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall

   come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts.

8 The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts.

9 The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the

   LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts.

                                                                                    (Haggai 2:5-9)

 

all my salvation.....all my desire”

 

What are you looking for out of life?

 

“....who daily loadeth us with benefits”; (Psalm 68:19)

preceded by “Blessed be the Lord” and followed by “even the God of

our salvation”

 

“...they have more than heart could wish;  Psalm 73:7

 

Thou hast put gladness in my heart.....I will both

lay me down in peace and sleep:  for thou Lord, only

makest me dwell in safety.” (Psalm 6:7-8)

 

 

The following is excerpted from Spurgeon Sermon 3442 - The Desire of All Nations -

Thursday evening - August 25, 1870

 

 

II. THE GLORY OF THE SPIRITUAL SECOND TEMPLE IS ACTUALLY THE

INCARNATION OF CHRIST.

 

“I will shake all nations,” and He who is the desire of all nations shall come

a rendering which is not incorrect, and is established by a great mass of

theologians, though, according to some of the ablest critics, a rendering

scarcely to be sustained by the original. He who is the desire of all nations

shall come, and that shall be the glory of the second spiritual temple. Jesus

Christ, then, is the desire of all nations, if so we read the text, and this is

doubtless true. All nations have a dark and dim desire for Him. I say a dark

desire, for without that adjective I could scarcely speak the truth. Most

interesting chapters have been written by students of the history of

mankind upon the preparedness of men’s hearts for the coming of Christ at

His incarnation. It is very certain that almost all nations have a tradition of

the coming one. The Jews, of course, expected the Messiah. There were

persons instructed according to the culture of various nations, which,

though they do not expect the Messiah quite so clearly as the Jews, had

almost as shrewd a guess as to what He might be and do as the mere

ritualistic and Pharisaic Jews had. There was a notion all over the world at

that time of Christ’s coming, that some great one was to descend from

heaven, and to come into this world for this world’s good. He was in that

respect darkly and dimly the desire of all nations. But in all nations there

have been some persons more instructed to whom Christ has really been

the object of desire with much more of intelligence. Job was a Gentile and

a fearer of God. We have no reason to believe that Job was a solitary

specimen of enlightened persons: we have reason rather to hope that in all

countries all over the world God has had a chosen people, who have

known and feared Him, who have not had all the light which has been given

to us, but who better used what light they had, and were guided by his

secret Spirit to much more of light, perhaps, than we think it right, with

our little knowledge, to credit them with. These, then, as representatives of

all the nations, were desiring the coming of the great Deliverer, the

incarnate God; and in this sense, representatively, the whole of the world

was desiring Christ in that higher sense, and He was the desire of all

nations. But, my brethren, does this mean, or does it not mean, that Christ

is exactly what all the nations need? If they did but know, if they could but

understand Him, He is just what they would desire and should desire. Were

their reason taught rightly, and were their minds instructed by the Spirit to

desire the best in all the world, Christ is just what they want. All the world

desire a way to God. Hence men set up priests and anoint them with oil,

and smear them with I know not what, only that they may be mediators

between them and God. They must have something to come between their

guilt and God’s glorious holiness. Oh; if they knew it, WHAT THEY WANT

IS CHRIST!  You want no priest, but the great “Apostle and High Priest of our

profession.” You want no mediator with God, but the one Mediator, the

man Christ Jesus, who is also equal with God. Oh! world, why wilt thou go

about to seek this priest and that other deceiver, when HE WHO THOU

WANTEST IS APPOINTED BY THE MOST HIGH!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

He whom Jacob saw in

his dream as the ladder which reached from earth to heaven is the only means —

the Son of Man and yet the Son of God. The world wants a peacemaker; oh!

how badly it wants it now! I seem as I walk my garden, as I go to my

pulpit, as I go to my bed, to hear the distant cries and moans of wounded

and dying men. We are so familiarized each day with horrible details of

slaughter, that if we give our minds to the thought, I am sure we must feel

a nausea, a perpetual sickness creeping over us. The reek and steam of

those murderous fields, the smell of the warm blood of men flowing out on

the soil, must come to us and vex our spirits Earth wants a peacemaker,

and it is He, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, and the friend of

Gentiles, the Prince of Peace, who will make war to cease unto the ends of

the earth. Man wants a purifier. Very many nations feel, somehow or other,

that political affairs do not go as one could wish. There are great

excellences in personal government, but great disadvantages. There are

great excellences in republican government, but remarkable difficulties too.

There are supreme excellences, as we think, in our own form of

government, but a great many things to be amended, for all that; and this

world is altogether out of joint; it is a crazy old concern, and does not

seem as if it could be amended with all the tinkering of our reformers in the

lapse of years. The fact is, it wants the Maker, who made it, to come in and

put it to rights. It needs the Hercules that is to turn the stream right

through the Augean stable; it wants the Christ of God to turn the stream of

His atoning sacrifice right through the whole earth, to sweep away the

whole filth of ages, and it never will be done unless HE DOETH IT!

He is the one, the true Reformer, the true rectifier of all wrong, and in

this respect the desire of all nations. Oh! if the world could gather up all her

right desire; if she could condense in one cry all her wild wishes; if all true

lovers of mankind could condense their theories and extract the true wine of

wisdom from them; it would just come to this, WE WANT AN INCARNATE

GOD, and you have got the INCARNATE GOD!  Oh! nations, but ye know it not!

Ye, in the dark, are groping after Him, and know not that He is there.

Brethren, I may add, Christ is certainly the desire of all nations in this

respect, that we desire Him for all nations. Oh! that the world were

encompassed in His gospel! Would God the sacred fire would run along the

ground, that the little handful of corn on the top of the mountains would

soon make its fruit to shake like Lebanon. Oh! when will it come, when

will it come that all the nations shall know Him? Let us pray for it: let us

labor for it.

 

And one other meaning I may give to this: He is the desirable one of all

nations, bringing back the former translation of this text. He is the choice

one of all nations. He is the chief among ten thousand, and the altogether

lovely. He, whom we love, is such an one that He can never be matched by

another, His rival could not be found amongst the sons of men. There is

none like Him; there is none like Him amongst the angels of light; there is

none that can stand in comparison with Him. The desire, the one that ought

to be desired, the most desirable of all the nations, is Jesus Christ, and it is

the glory of the Christian Church, which is the second temple that Christ is

in her, her head, her Lord. It is never her glory that she condescends to

make an iniquitous union with the State. It is her glory that Christ is her

sole King, it is her glory that He is her sole Prophet, and that He is her sole

Priest, and that He then gives to all His people to be kings and priests with

Him, Himself the center and source of all their glory and their power.

I cannot stay longer, though the theme tempts me, but must just give you

the last word, which is this, the visible glory of the true second temple will

be Christ’s second coming. He, Himself, is her glory, whether at His first

coming, or at His second coming. The Church will be no more glorious at

the second coming than now. “What!” say you, “no more glorious!” No;

but more apparently glorious. Christ is as glorious on the cross as He is on

the throne; it is the appearance only that shall alter. “Then shall the

righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father, but they

evermore are brightness itself, in the person of Jesus Christ. Now, brethren,

we are to expect, as long as this world lasts, that all things will shake that

are to be moved. They will go on shaking. We call the world sometimes

terra firma”; it is not this world, surely, that deserves such a name as that;

there is nothing stable beneath the stars; all things else will shake, and as

the shaking goes on, Jesus Christ will, to those who know Him, become

more and more their desire. I suppose, if the world went on, in some things

mending and improving, and were to go up to a point, we should not want

Christ to come in a hurry, we would rather that things should be

perpetuated; but the shaking will make Christ more and more the desire of

the nations. (Do you not think that the California wildfires of this last week

is a shaking?  CY - 2025) “The whole creation groaneth,” is groaning up to now,

but it will groan more and more “in pain together travailing” — the apostle saith

“even until now.”  (Romans 8:22)  The travailing pains grow worse and

worse, and worse, and it will be so with this world; it will travail till at last it

must come to the consummation of her desire. The Church will say, “Come,

Lord Jesus.” She will say it with gathering earnestness; she will continue

still to say it, though there are intervals in which she will forget her Lord,

but still her heart’s desire will be that He will come; and at last He will

surely come and bring to this world not only Himself, the desire of all

nations but all that can be desired, for those days of His, when He

appeareth, shall be to His people as the days of heaven upon earth, the days

of their honor, the days of their rest — the day in which the kingdoms shall

belong unto Christ.  Revelation 11:15 tells us the time is coming when  ....the

kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His

Christ; and He shall reign for ever and ever.”  CY - 2025)  Oh! brethren,

it is not for me to go into details on a subject which would require many discourses,

and which could not be brought out in the few last words of a discourse. But here

is the great hope of that splendid building, the Church, which is desired. Her glory

essentially lies in the Incarnate God, who has come into her midst. Her

glory manifestly will lie in the second coming of that Incarnate God, when

He shall be revealed from heaven to those that look and are waiting for and

hasting unto the coming of the Son of God — looking for Him with

gladsome expectation. And this is the joy of the Church. He has gone, but

He has left word, “I will come again, and will receive you unto myself, that

where I am, ye may be also.” Remember the words that were spoken of the

angels to the Church, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye here, gazing up

into heaven? This same Jesus who is gone up from you into heaven shall so

come in like manner as ye have seen Him go up into heaven.” In propria

persona — in very deed and truth, He shall come: —

 

“These eyes shall see Him in that day,

The God that died for me;

And all my rising bones shall say,

Lord, who is like to thee?”

 

Then shall come the adoption, the raising of the body, the reception of a

glory to that body reunited to the soul, such as we have not dreamed of,

for eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of

man to conceive what God hath prepared for them that love Him. Though

He hath revealed them unto us by His Holy Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all

things, yea, the deep things of God, yet have our ears heard but little

thereof, and we have not received the full discovery of the things that shall

be hereafter. The Lord bless you! May you all be parts of His Church, have

a share in His glory, and a share in the manifestation of that glory at theH

last.

 

Dear hearer, I would send thee away with this one query in thine ear — Is

Christ thy desire, Couldest thou say, with David, “He is all my salvation

and all my desire”? Could you gather up your feet in the bed, with dying

Jacob, and say, “I have waited for thy will, O God”? By your desire shall

you be known. The desire of the righteous shall be granted. Delight thyself

also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desire of thine heart.

But the desire of many is a groveling desire: it is a sinful desire: it is a

disgraceful desire — a desire which, if it be attained, the attainment of it

will afford very brief pleasure. Oh! sinner, let thy desires go after Christ.

Remember if thou wouldest have Him, thou hast not to earn Him — fight

for Him — win Him — but HE IS TO BE HAD FOR THE ASKING!

“Lay hold,” says he apostle, “on eternal life.” As if it were ours, if we did but

grip it. God give us grace to lay hold on eternal life, for Jesus from the cross is

saying, Look unto me, and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth,” and from His

throne of glory He still is saying, “Come unto me,” exalted on high, “to give

repentance and remission of sin,” and He will give them both to those who

seek Him. Seek Him, then, this night. God grant it for His Son’s sake.

 

 

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Psalm 6:6-7

 

“There be many who say, Who will show us any good?

.......Thou hast put gladness in my heart.....I will both

lay me down in peace and sleep:  for thou Lord, only

makest me dwell in safety.”

 

I. HERE IS AN INQUIRY PUT. “Who will show us good?” By which is meant,

not so much What is good in itself? asWhat will make us happy, and bring

us a sense of satisfaction? Over and above our intellectual (faculties), we

have emotional faculties. The emotions are to the spiritual part of us what

the (physical) sensations are to the bodily part. Among the various fallacies of

some wise men of this world, one of the wildest is that emotion has no place in

the search after, and in the ascertainment of, truth. It would be quite safe

to reverse that, and to say that unless the emotions have their rightful play,

few truths can be rightly sought or found. An equilibrium of absolute

indifference concerning truth or error would be a guilty carelessness. Our

craving after happiness is God’s lesson to us through the emotions, that we

are dependent for satisfaction on something outside us; and when such

satisfaction is actually reached, it is so far the sign that the higher life is

being healthfully sustained. Our nature is too complex to be satisfied with

supply in any one department. Our intellectual nature craves the true. Our

moral nature craves the right. Our sympathetic nature calls for love. (thus the

basic emotional needs love/security/recognition contrasted with our known

physical needs of food/clothing/shelter!  Our conscious weakness and

dependence call for strength from another. Our

powers of action demand a sphere of service which shall neither corrupt

nor exhaust. Our spiritual nature cries out for God, life, and immortality.

Who can show us “good” that will meet all these wants? Such is the inquiry.

 

 

How to  separate sin from sinners — the sinner

from his sins?    Matthew 13:49-50

 

winnow the chaff from the wheat