The Sure Mercies of
David Part VI
(a sequel to the
Christmas Lesson)
Luke
1:23-38
II Samuel 23:5; Haggai 2:5-9
Psalm
72:1-20; 10:1-11
February 2, , 2025
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.
Ephesians 3:14-21
14 For this
cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ,
15 Of whom the
whole family in heaven and earth is named,
16 That He
would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be
strengthened with might
by His Spirit in the inner man;
16 That Christ
may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted
and grounded in
love,
18
May be able to comprehend with all saints
what is the breadth, and
length, and depth,
and height;
19 And to know
the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye
might be filled
with all the fullness of God.
20 Now unto Him
that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all
that we ask or
think, according to the power that worketh in us,
21 Unto Him be
glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all
ages, world without end. Amen.
(Ephesians
1:
9 Having made
known unto us the mystery of His will, according to
His good
pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself:
10 That in the
dispensation of the fullness of times He might gather
together in one all
things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and
which are on
earth; even in Him:
11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being
predestinated
according to the
purpose of Him who worketh all things after the
counsel of His own
will:
12 That we
should be to the praise of His glory, who first
trusted in
Christ.
(The first seventeen verses of Psalm 72 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."
Psalm 72:1-17
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.
Back
to Spurgeon’s Sermon
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.
(Revelation 1:1-7)
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.
"Excerpted text Copyright AGES Library, LLC. All rights reserved.
Materials are reproduced by
permission."
This material can be found at:
http://www.adultbibleclass.com
If this exposition is helpful,
please share with others.
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
Why? or, Hard Facts and Puzzling Questions
(vs. 1-18)
Whether or no this psalm was originally a
part of the ninth is a question
which, as may be seen, is discussed by many
expositors. The mere absence
of a title to it is, however, a very slight
indication in that direction; while
the contrast, almost violent, between the two
psalms seems to be sufficient
to show that they could scarcely have been
penned by the same writer at
the same time. The ninth psalm is a song of praise over
the great
deliverance God had
wrought in bringing about the destroyer’s destruction.
This is a mournful
wail over the ill designs and too successful plans of the
wicked on the one hand,
and over the long silence of God on the other.
The ungodly are at the very height of their
riotous and iniquitous reveling;
and the Divine interposition is passionately
and agonizingly implored. We
have no clue whatever to the precise period of
disorder to which reference
is here made. Perhaps it is well that we have
not. There
have been times in
the history of the
world and of the Church, again and again, when
designing and godless men
have been, as it were, let loose, and have been
permitted to play havoc
with God’s people, while the righteous were
mourning and the wicked were
boasting that God did not interpose to
check their cruelties
and crimes. And it will be
necessary for the student
and expositor to throw himself mentally into
the midst of such a state of
things, ere he can appreciate all the words of a
psalm like this. For it is one
of those containing words of man to God, and
not words of God to man.
We have therein:
·
terrific
facts specified;
·
hard
questions asked;
·
a
permanent solace; and
·
a forced-out
prayer.
I. TERRIFIC FACTS. (Vs. 2-11.) Let every phrase in this indictment be
weighed; it presents as fearful a picture of human
wickedness as any
contained in the Word of God. It sets before us:
·
pride,
·
persecution,
·
device,
·
boasting,
·
ridicule,
·
denial
of
·
hardness,
·
scorn,
·
evil-speaking,
·
defying
and denying of God,
·
oppression
and crushing of the poor,
·
a
glorying in deeds of shame, and
·
expected
impunity therein.
And what is more trying still is, that God
seems to let all this go on, and keeps
silence, and stands afar off, and hides Himself in
times of trouble. Such trials
were felt by the Protestants in their early
struggles; by the Covenanters in times
of persecution in
Massacre; by the Waldenses
and Albigenses; by Puritans and Independents under
Charles I.; by Churchmen under Cromwell;
and by the Malagasy in our own times;
and it is only by the terror of such times that
psalms like this can be understood.
II. HARD QUESTIONS. Of these
there are two. One is in the first verse.
1. Why is God silent? As we look at
matters, we might be apt to say that if
God has indeed a
people in the world, He will never let them fall into the
hands of the destroyer; or that, if they are
oppressed by evil men, God will
quickly deliver them out of their hands, and will
show His disapproval of
their ways. But very often is it otherwise — to sight,
and then faith is tried;
and it is no wonder that Old Testament saints
should ask “Why?” when
even New Testament saints often do the same! But we know that to His
own, God gives an inward peace and strength that are better
marks of His
love and better proofs of his timely aid than any outward
distinction could
possibly be.
Take, e.g., the case of Blandina in the times
of early
persecution; and the cases of hundreds of others. And
besides this, it is by
the Christ-like bearing of believers under hardships such as
these, that God
reveals the reality and glory of his redeeming grace (see 1 Peter 4:12-14).
2. A
second question is: Why doth the wicked contemn God? Ah! why
does
he? He does contemn God in many ways.
(a) His inward thought is, “There is no God” (v. 4).
(b) He denies that God will call him to account
(v. 13).
(c) He denies that God watches his actions (v.
11).
(d) He lulls himself in imagined perpetual
security (v. 6).
Thus the life of
such a one is a perpetual denial or defiance
of God. And all
this is attributed
(a) to “pride” (v. 4);
(b) to love of
evil as evil (v. 3).
And yet the psalmist,
seeing through the vain boast of the ungodly, may
well peal out again and again the question,
“Why does he do this? “for the
implied meaning of the writer is, “Why does he do
this, when, in spite of all
his proud glorying in ill, he knows that God will bring his wickedness to
an
end, and will call him to account for it? This is the thought which connects
our present division with the next.
III. PERMANENT SOLACE. However hard it may be to interpret the
ways of God at any one crisis, yet the believer
knows that he must not
judge God by what he sees of His ways, but ought
to estimate His ways by
what he knows of God. And there are four great truths known about God
by the
revelation of Himself to man.
1. Jehovah is the
eternal King (v. 14).
2. God is the
Helper of the fatherless (ibid.).
3. God is known as
the Judge of the oppressed
(v. 18; compare
chps.
103:6; 94:8-23).
4. God hears His people’s cry (v. 17).
When believers know all this,
they have a perpetual source of
relief even
under the heaviest cares. God’s plan for the world, in His
government
thereof by Jesus Christ, is to redress every wrong
of man, and to bring
about peace, by righteousness (ch. 72:2-4 [this a reference to a part of
last week’s, now this week’s lesson - CY - 2025]).
IV. FERVID PRAYER. (vs. 12, 15.) Times of severest
pressure are
those which force out
the mightiest prayer (Acts
4:23-30). Luther, etc.;
Daniel (Daniel 2:16-18;
9:1-19). The true method of prayer is thus
indicated, viz. to ascertain from God’s revelation of himself,
what he is and
what are his promises, and then to approach him in humble
supplication,
pleading with him to reveal the glory of his Name, by fulfilling
the promises
he has made; and when our prayers move in the direct
line of God’s
promises, we are absolutely sure of an answer (but see ch. 65:5;
Revelation 8:4-5; Deuteronomy 33:26-29). Today (we think - CY - 2025) is a
day of God’s concealing Himself; but HIS DAY OF SELF-REVEALING
IS DRAWING NIGH!
II. A QUESTION
ASKED AND ANSWERED.
“Wherefore,”
etc.?
Because “he hath
said in his heart, Thou wilt not require it” (Psalm 10:11).
Men persuade
themselves that, as they forget God, so He forgets them.
That is all they
desire. An ungodly man’s notion of forgiveness is mere
omission to punishment;
neglect of justice; indulgence, not because it is right
not to punish, but
merely because the thought of punishment is too
dreadful and painful. “God,” he says, “is too merciful to
punish.” He does
not consider or understand that, as it is impossible
for God to forget
anything, so there would be no true mercy, but the
reverse, in the neglect
of justice. This is what is meant by “will by no means clear the
guilty,” even
in the very proclamation of Divine mercy
(Exodus 34:6-7).
I. Psalm 10:2-11.) Let every
phrase in this indictment be
weighed; it presents as fearful a picture of human
wickedness as any
contained in the Word of God. It sets before us:
·
pride,
·
persecution,
·
device,
·
boasting,
·
ridicule,
·
denial
of
·
hardness,
·
scorn,
·
evil-speaking,
·
defying
and denying of God,
·
oppression
and crushing of the poor,
·
a
glorying in deeds of shame, and
·
expected
impunity therein.
EDIT
And what is more trying still is, that God seems
to let all this go on, and keeps
silence, and stands afar off, and hides Himself in
times of trouble. Such trials
were felt by the Protestants in their early
struggles; by the Covenanters in times
of persecution in
Massacre; by the Waldenses
and Albigenses; by Puritans and Independents under
Charles I.; by Churchmen under Cromwell;
and by the Malagasy in our own times;
and it is only by the terror of such times that
psalms like this can be understood.