The Sure Mercies of
David Part V
(a sequel to the Christmas Lesson)
Luke
1:23-38
II Samuel 23:5; Haggai 2:5-9
Psalm
72:1-20
January 26, 2025
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!
God
revealed to Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, in a dream of the ladder which
reached
from earth to heaven is the only means —
the Son of
Man and yet the Son of God.
Genesis
28:10-16
10 And Jacob went out from
11 And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night,
because the sun was set; and he took of the
stones of that place,
and put them for his pillows, and lay down
in that place to sleep.
12 And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the
top of it reached to heaven: and behold the
angels of God
ascending and descending on it.
13 And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD
God of Abraham thy father, and the God of
Isaac: the land
whereon thou liest,
to thee will I give it, and to thy seed;
14 And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread
abroad to the west, and to the east, and to
the north, and to the
south: and in thee and in thy seed shall
all the families of the earth
be blessed.
15 And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places
whither thou goest,
and will bring thee again into this land; for I
will not leave thee, until I have done that
which I have spoken to
thee of.
16 And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD
is in this place; and I knew it not.
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
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;
"Augean stable" most often appears in the phrase "clean
the Augean stable,"
which usually means "clear away corruption" or "perform a large and
unpleasant task that has long called for attention." Augeas,
the mythical
king of
thirty years -- .
taken from:
Hercules' Fifth
Labor: the Augean Stables
The world
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 the 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
will it
come that all the nations shall know Him? Let us pray for it: let us
labor for
it.
________________________________________________________________-
Psalm
72
This Psalm contains a
description of an exalted king, and of the blessings of His reign.
These blessings are of
such a nature as to prove that the
subject of the Psalm must
be a Divine Person:
distinctly taught in Galatians 3:16, it is in Him that
all the blessings of
redemption are to come upon the world. Charles Hodge, in
"Systematic
Theology." 1871.
(The first seventeen verses have a star beside them in
the King James Version
and represent a direct reference to Jesus
Christ – CY – 2011)
TITLE. A Psalm for Solomon. The best linguists affirm that this should be
rendered, of or by Solomon. There is not
sufficient ground for the
rendering for. It is pretty certain
that the title declares Solomon to be the
author of the Psalm,
and yet from v. 20 it would seem that David
uttered it in prayer
before he died. With some diffidence we suggest that
the spirit and matter
of the Psalm are David's, but that he was too near his
end to pen the words,
or cast them into form: Solomon, therefore, caught
his dying father's
song, fashioned it in goodly verse, and, without robbing
his father, made the
Psalm his own. It is, we conjecture, the Prayer of
David, but the Psalm
of Solomon. Jesus is here, beyond all
doubt, in the
glory of His reign, both as He
now is, and as He shall be revealed in the
latter day glory.
DIVISION. We
shall follow the division suggested by Alexander. "A
glowing description
of the reign of Messiah as:
· righteous, vs. 1-7;
· universal, vs. 8-11;
· beneficent, vs. 12-14; a
· and perpetual, vs. 15-17;
· to which are added a doxology, vs.18-19; and
· a postscript, v. 20."
1 Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto
the king’s son.
2 He
shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with
judgment.
3 The
mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills,
by righteousness.
4 He
shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of
the needy, and shall break in pieces the
oppressor.
5 They
shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure,
throughout all generations.
6 He
shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers
that water the earth.
7 In
His days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so
long as the moon endureth.
8 He
shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river
unto the ends of the earth.
9 They
that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before Him; and His
enemies shall lick the dust.
10 The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall
bring presents: the
kings of
11 Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him: all nations shall serve
him.
12 For He shall deliver the needy when he crieth;
the poor also, and
him that hath no helper.
13 He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the
needy.
14 He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious
shall their blood be in His sight.
15 And He shall live, and to Him shall be given of the gold of
prayer also shall be made for Him
continually; and daily shall He be
praised.
16 There shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the
mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake
like
the city shall flourish like grass of the
earth.
17 His name shall endure for ever: His name shall be continued as
long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in Him: all nations shall
call Him
blessed.
18 Blessed be the LORD God, the God of
wondrous things.
19 And blessed be
His glorious name for ever: and let the whole earth
be filled with his glory; Amen, and Amen.
20 The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.
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.
1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him, to shew
unto His servants things which must shortly
come to pass; and He
sent and signified it by his angel unto his
servant John:
2 Who
bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus
Christ, and of all things that he saw.
3
Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the
words of this
prophecy, and keep those things which are
written therein: for the
time is at hand.
4 John
to the seven churches which are in
and peace, from Him which is, and which
was, and which is to
come; and from the seven Spirits which are
before His throne;
5 And
from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first
begotten of the dead, and the prince of the
kings of the earth. Unto
Him that loved us, and washed us from our
sins in His own blood,
6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and
His Father; to
Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.
Amen.
7Behold,
He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and
they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail
because of Him. Even so, Amen.
8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the
Lord,
which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
(Revelation 1:1-7)
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
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
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? as — What 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