Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vols. 13–63

Psalm 144. A Psalm of David. No doubt written after some great victory and also before another severe struggle. The Christian man seldom escapes from one difficulty without falling into another. Thanks be unto God, He that is with us in six troubles will not forsake us in the seventh!

Verse 1. Blessed is the LORD my strength, which teaches my hand to war, and my fingers to fight. David does not ascribe any honor to himself. Human strength is from within, from the nerves, sinews and muscles, but the Believer's strength is from without—"Blessed is Jehovah my strength." Now, if Jehovah is our strength, then nothing can be too difficult for us, for he whose strength is the Omnipotence of God can do all things. "Which teaches my hands to war." Just as the young soldier was, as it were, bound apprentice to the old warrior, went out to learn the drill and, afterwards, was taken by him into the battle, so does the Lord by Providence and by experience train His people's hands to war and their fingers to fight.

2. My goodness, and my fortress; my high tower, and my deliverer; my shield, and He in whom I trust. Here are six names, or rather, five titles of God and then an inference from them—"He in whom I trust." Oh, I know, you people of God, you can say of Jehovah, "He is the One in whom I trust." Rely upon anyone else and your hopes are doomed to disappointment—as a bowing wall shall he be—and as a tottering fence. Happy is he that has the God of Jacob for his refuge! Mind that you stand to this and never depart from it.

2. Who subdues my people under me. Probably this Psalm was written after the crushing out of the great revolt under Absalom, and well might David ascribe to the Divine hand his deliverance from that trial. It seemed as if the kingdom had gone from him—his ungrateful son had stolen the people's hearts and yet God was pleased to give him back his kingdom—and to set him upon his throne yet more firmly than before. "Who subdues my people under me." Christian, say that it is God who subdues your troubles, God who conquers your sins, God who enlightens your darkness, God who does all things for you! Give Him all the praise for every deliverance!

3. LORD, what is man that You take knowledge of him! Or the son of man, that You make account of him! Have you not often felt like this? You have said, "Lord, how could You have bestowed such favors upon me, so utterly unworthy, so insignificant, so unknown, so worthless?" "What is man, that You take knowledge of him?"

4. Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passes away. You know that a shadow is nothing. It is rather the absence of something than anything in itself. Shadow is the absence of light and what is man but, as it were, the absence of light, the absence of anything that is substantial? He is but the fleeting shadow of some earthly object which soon passes away. Having thus magnified God for the past and marveled at His loving kindness, the Psalmist now turns to prayer—

5. Bow Your heavens, O LORD, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke. God did but set one foot upon Mount Sinai and it became altogether on a smoke. "The hills melted like wax at the Presence of the Lord." Well, Believer, you have many mountains, but you can ask God to "touch the mountains, and they shall smoke." No matter what the mountains may be—high as the heavens your troubles may ascend, till they even seem to block up your pathway to the skies—yet one touch of the Divine finger shall make them melt away like wax before the fire—and you shall march on triumphantly to your God.

6. 7. Cast forth lightning and scatter them: shoot out Your arrows, and destroy them. Send Your hand from above; rid me, and deliver me out of great waters, from the hand of strange children. Moses, you know, was called, "one drawn out of the water," so are all Gods people—they are drawn out of floods of tribulation. They are surrounded by those floods as though deserted and left there to perish, but keen is the eye that watches over them, strong is the hand that preserves them and sure is the arm that delivers them!

8. Whose mouth speaks vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood. They swear, but they perjure themselves. They lift up the right hand but they lie all the while. Rid me, O God, from such men, for, of all enemies, those that can lie are the worst, for you never know where you are with such people. Snakes in the grass are the most dangerous reptiles and enemies who will do any evil thing in order to ruin you, and who will tell any lie in the world in order to injure you, are the hardest to overthrow.

9-11. I will sing a new song unto You, O God: upon a psaltery and an instrument of ten strings will I sing praises unto You. It is He that gives salvation unto kings: who delivers David, His servant, from the hurtful sword. Rid me, and deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaks vanity, and their right hand is a right hand offalsehood. You see, good men sometimes repeat their prayers—they present the same petition over, again, and they thus follow the example of Christ, who prayed three times, "saying the same words."

12. That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth, that our daughters may be as cornerstones, polished after the similitude of a palace. Or, rather, "of a temple." This should be the prayer of every parent, that his sons may be bringing forth fruit unto God, that his daughters may be fixed as polished stones in the Church of God to form a part of the great spiritual temple.

13. That our garners may be full, affording all manner of store. When this is the case, spiritually—when there is milk for babes, meat for strong men and not a little of each, but more than enough for all—then are we very happy.

13. That our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our streets. Spiritual fertility is a blessed thing, when each Christian, each of the Lord's sheep, becomes prolific in increasing Christ's flock.

14. That our oxen may be strong to labor. That the ministers of God may be mighty. That Sunday school teachers and all earnest laborers may have strength given to them.

14. That there is no breaking in, nor going out. That there are no wolves to destroy by breaking in and that there are no sheep to suffer injury by going astray.

14, 15. That there is no complaining in our streets. Happy are the people who are in such a case: yes, happy are the people whose God is the LORD. May this be our case! And if it is our case, then the Lord is our God even at this day!

Now let us read about two interesting incidents in David's warrior life.

2 Samuel 5:17. But when the Philistines heard that they had anointed David king over Israel, all the Philistines came up to seek David. To thrust him down and kill him if they could—and so put an end to his prosperous reign!

17-20. And David heard of it, and went down to the hold. The Philistines also came and spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim. And David enquired of the LORD, saying, Shall I go up to the Philistines? Will You deliver them into my hands? And the LORD said unto David, Go up: for I will doubtless deliver the Philistines into your hands. And David came to Baal-Perazim, and David smote them there, and said, The LORD has broken forth upon my enemies before me, as the breach of waters. As a flood breaks forth and carries all before it!

20,21. Therefore he called the name of that place Baal-Perazim. And there they left their images, and David and his men burned them. The Philistines brought their gods with them, in the hope of being, thereby, defended. But, "David and his men burned them." That was the very best thing to do with them. What a pity they did not save them for aesthetic purposes! Thus do men with fine old works of art, like pictures of the Virgin Mary. No, no, burn them! That is the very best thing to do with anything that ever has been worshipped by mortal man. If they have ever been set up in the place of God, they are cursed from that moment—let them be burned, or dashed in pieces—or in some way destroyed. "There they left their images and David and his men burned them."

22-24. And the Philistines came up yet again, and spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim. And when David enquired of the LORD, He said, You shall not go up; but fetch a compass behind them, and come upon them over against the mulberry trees. And let it be, when you hear the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then you shall bestir yourself. Or be sharp and go at them!

24, 25. For then shall the LORD go out before you, to smite the host of the Philistines. And David did so, as the LORD had commanded him. I hope that may be said of you and me all our lives!

25. And smote the Philistines from Geba until you come to Gazer. That is, he utterly overthrew them and drove them away.

"Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." John 6:37.

EOD CHRIST will not die in vain. His Father gave Him a certain number to be the reward of His soul travail and He will have every one of them, as He said, "All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me." Almighty Grace shall sweetly constrain them all to come. My father recently gave me some letters which I wrote to him when I began to preach. They are almost boyish epistles, but, in reading through them, again, I noticed in one of them this expression, "How I long to see thousands of men saved, but my great comfort is that some will be saved, must be saved, shall be saved, for it is written, 'All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me.'"

The question for each of you to ask is, "Do I belong in that number?" I am going to preach with the view of helping you to find out whether you belong to that, "all," whom the Father gave to Christ—the "all" who shall come to Him. We can use the second part of the verse to help us to understand the first. "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out," will explain our Savior's previous Words, "All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me."

I shall have no time for any further preface. I must at once get to my subject and try to put everything in a condensed form. Kindly give heed to the word, think about it, pray over it—and may God the Holy Spirit apply it to all your hearts!

I. First, notice in the text THE NECESSITY OF CHARACTER—"Him that comes to Me." If you want to be saved, you must come to Christ. There is no other way of salvation under Heaven but coming to Christ. Go wherever else you will, you will be disappointed and lost—it is only by coming to Him that you can by any possibility have eternal life!

What is it to come to Christ? Well, it implies leaving all other confidences. To come to anybody is to leave everybody else. To come to Christ is to leave everything else—to leave every other hope, every other trust. Are you trusting to your own works? Are you trusting to a priest? Are you trusting to the merits of the Virgin Mary, or the saints and angels in Heaven? Are you trusting to anything but the Lord Jesus Christ? If so, leave it, and have done with it! Come away from every other reliance and trust to Christ Crucified, for this is the only way of salvation, as Peter said to the rulers and elders of Israel, "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."—

"To Jesus bleeding on the tree, Turn you your eye, your heart," and come to Him at once and your soul shall live forever!

To come to Jesus means, in brief, trusting Him. He is a Savior—that is His business—come to Him and trust Him to save you. If you could save yourself, you would not need a Savior, and now that Christ has set up to be a Savior, let Him do the business. He will. Come and lay all your needs at His feet and trust Him. Resolve that, if lost, you will be lost trusting alone in Jesus, and that can never be! Tie up all your hopes into one bundle and put that bundle upon Christ. Let Him be all your salvation, all your desire and you will be surely saved!

I have sometimes tried to explain to you what the life of faith is like. It is very much like a man walking on a tight rope. The Believer is told that he shall not fall, He trusts in God that he shall not, but every now and then he says, "What a way it is down there if I did fall!" I have often had this experience. I have gone up an invisible staircase—I could not see the next step, but when I put my foot down on it, I found that it was solid granite. I could not see the next step and it seemed as if I should plunge into an abyss. Yet have I gone on upward, steadily, one step at a time, never able to see farther into absolute darkness, as it seemed, and yet always with a light just where the light was needed.

When I used to hold a candle for my father, in the evening, when he was sawing wood out in the yard, he used to say, "Boy, hold the candle where I am sawing, don't look over there." And I have often thought to myself, when I wanted to see something in the middle of next week, or next year, that the Lord seemed to say to me, "Hold your candle on the piece of work which you have to do today—and if you can see that, be satisfied, for that is all the light you need just now." Suppose that you could see into next week? It would be a great mercy if you lost your sight a while, for a far-seeing gaze into care and trouble is no gain! "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof"—as sufficient unto the day will be the good thereof.

But the Lord does train His people for the skies by testing their faith in the matter of His daily care of them. Often a man's reliance upon God for the supply of his earthly needs proves that he has trusted the Lord for the weightier affairs relating to his soul's salvation. Do not draw a line between the temporal and the spiritual and say, "God will go just so far—and I must not take such and such a thing to Him in prayer." I remember hearing of a certain good man, of whom one said, "Why, he is a very curious man—he prayed about a key the other day!" Why not pray about a key? Why not pray about a pin? Sometimes it may be as important to pray about a pin as to pray about a kingdom! Little things are often the linchpins of great events. Take care that you bring everything to God in faith and prayer. "Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God."

I have turned aside from my subject for a minute, but let us now think, again, of this matter of coming to Christ. To come to Jesus not only implies leaving all other confidences and trusting Christ, it also means following Him. If you trust Him, you must obey Him. If you leave your soul in His hands, you must take Him to be your Master, and your Lord, as well as your Savior. Christ has come to save you from sin, not in sin. He will, therefore, help you to leave your sin, whatever it is. He will give you the victory over it! He will make you holy. He will help you to do whatever you should do in the sight of God. He is able to save unto the uttermost them who come unto God by Him—but you must come to Him if you would be saved by Him.

To put together all I have said—you must quit every other hope; you must take Jesus to be your sole confidence—and then you must be obedient to His command and take Him to be your Master and Lord. Will you do that? If not, I have nothing to say to you except this—He that believes not in Him will perish without hope! If you will not have God's remedy for your soul malady, the only remedy that there is, there remains for you nothing but blackness and dismal darkness forever and ever for you!

II. But, now, secondly, while there is this necessity of character, notice, also, THE UNIVERSALITY OF PER-SONS—"Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out."

Granted that he comes to Christ, that is all that is needed. Does someone say, "Sir, I am a very obscure person. Nobody knows me. My name was never in the papers and never will be. I am a nobody"? Well, if Mr. Nobody comes to Christ, He will not cast him out! Come along, you unknown person, you anonymous individual, you that everybody but Christ forgets! If even you come to Jesus, He will not cast you out.

Another says, "I am so very odd." Do not say much about that, for I am odd, too. But, dear Friends, however odd we are, though we may be thought very eccentric and some may even consider us a little touched in the head, yet, nevertheless, for all that, Jesus says, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." Come along with you, Mr. Oddman! You shall not be lost for lack of brains, nor even for having too many—though that is not a very common misfortune! If you will but come to Christ, though you have no talent, though you are but poor and will never make much headway in the world, Jesus says, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out."

"Ah," says a third friend, "I do not mind about being obscure, or being eccentric, but it is the greatness of my sin that keeps me back from Christ." Let us read the text again—"Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." If he had been guilty of seven murders and all the whoredoms and adulteries that ever defiled mortal man! If impossible sins could be charged against him—yet if he came to Christ, mark you, if he came to Christ—the promise of Jesus would be fulfilled even in his case, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out."

"But," says another, "I am completely worn out. I am good for nothing. I have spent all my days and years in sin. I have come to the very end of the chapter, I am not worth anybody's having." Come along with you, you derelict of life! Jesus says, "Him that comes to Me, I will in no wise cast out." You have to walk with two sticks, do you? Never mind, come to Jesus! You are so feeble that you wonder that you are alive at your advanced age? My Lord will receive you if you are a hundred years of age—there have been many cases in which persons have been brought to Christ even after that age! There are some very remarkable instances of that fact on record. Christ says, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." If he were as old as Methuselah, if he did but come to Christ, he would not be cast out!

"Alas," says one, "I am in a worse case than even that aged friend, for beside being old, I have resisted the Spirit of God! I have been many years troubled in my conscience, but I have tried to cover it all up. I have stifled every godly thought." Yes, yes, and it is a very sad thing, too. But for all that, if you come to Christ, if you can even make a dash for salvation and come to Jesus, He cannot cast you out!

Perhaps One friend says, "I am afraid that I have committed the unpardonable sin." If you come to Christ, you have not, I know—for him that comes to Him, Jesus will in no wise cast out! He cannot, therefore, you have not committed the unpardonable sin. Come along with you, man, and if you are blacker than all the rest of the sinners in the world, so much the more glorious shall be the Grace of God when it shall have proved its power by washing you whiter than snow in the precious blood of Jesus!

"Ah," says one, "you do not know me, Sir." No, dear Friend, I do not. But, perhaps, one of these days I may have that pleasure. "It will not be any pleasure to you, Sir, for I am an apostate. I used to be a professor of religion, but I have given it all up, and I have gone back to the world, willfully and wickedly doing all manner of evil things." Ah, well, if you can but come to Christ, though there were seven apostasies piled, one upon another, still His promise stands true, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." Whatever the past, or whatever the present, backslider, return to Christ, for He stands to His solemn promise, and there are no exceptions mentioned in my text—"Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out."

"Well, Sir," cries another, "I should like to come to Christ, but I do not feel fit to come." Then, come all unfit, just as you are! Jesus says, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." If I were awakened in the middle of the night by a cry of, "Fire!" and I saw that someone was at the window with a ladder, I do not think that I would stay in bed, and say, "I have not my black necktie on," or, "I have not my best waistcoat on." I would not speak in that way at all! I would be out of the window as quickly as ever I could, and down the ladder! Why do you talk about your fitness, fitness, fitness? I have heard of a cavalier, who lost his life because he stopped to curl his hair when Cromwell's soldiers were after him. Some of you may laugh at the man's foolishness, but that is all that your talk about fitness is! What is all your fitness but the curling of your hair when you are in imminent danger of losing your soul? Your fitness is nothing to Christ. Remember what we sang at the beginning of the service—

Come to Christ just as you are—foul, vile, careless, godless, Christless! Come now, even now, for Jesus said, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out."

Is there not a glorious width about my text? "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." What, "him," is this? It is, "him that comes!" What, "him that comes"? Any "him that comes" in all the world! If he comes to Christ, he shall not be cast out! A red man, or a black man, or a white man, or a yellow man, or a copper-colored man—whatever he is, if he comes to Jesus, he shall in no wise be cast out!

When you mean to put a thing broadly, it is always best to state it and leave it. Do not go into details! The Savior does not. Some years ago there was a man, a kind, loving husband, who wished to leave to his wife all his property. Whatever he had, he intended her to have it all, as she ought. So he put down in his will, "I leave to my beloved wife, Elizabeth, all that I have." That was all right. Then he went on to describe in detail what he was leaving her, and he wrote, "All my freehold and personal estate." The most of his property happened to be leasehold, so the wife did not get it because her husband gave a detailed description! It was in the detail that the property slipped away from the good woman.

Now, there is no detail at all here—"Him that comes." That means that every man, woman and child beneath the broad heavens, who will but come and trust in Christ, shall in no wise be cast out! I thank God that there is no allusion to any particular character, in order especially to say, "People of that character shall be received," for then the characters left out might be supposed to be excluded. But the text clearly means that every soul that comes to Christ shall be received by

III. The flight of time hurries me on! I therefore beg you to listen earnestly while I speak to you, in the third place, about THE UNMISTAKEABLENESS OF THE PROMISE—"Him that comes to Me I will in no wise"—that is, for no reason, under no circumstances, at no time, under no conditions whatever—"I will in no wise cast out." And which means, being interpreted, "I will receive him, I will save him, I will bless him."

Then if you, my dear Friend, come to Christ, how could the Lord cast you out? How could He do it in consistency with His truthfulness? Imagine my Lord Jesus making this declaration and giving it to us as an inspired Scripture, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out," and yet casting out somebody, even that unknown somebody up in the corner! Why, it would be a lie! It would be a gross lie! I pray you, blaspheme not my Lord, the truthful Christ, by supposing that He could be guilty of such conduct as that! He could do as He liked about whom He would receive until He made the promise—but after He had pledged His word, He bound Himself by the veracity of His Nature to keep it and, as long as Christ is the truthful Christ, He must receive every soul that comes to Him.

But let me also ask you, suppose that you came to Jesus and He cast you out, with what hands could He do it? "With His own hands," you answer. What? Christ coming forward to cast out a sinner who has come to Him? I ask again, with what hands could He do it? Would He do it with those pierced hands that still bear the marks of the nails? The Crucified rejecting a sinner? Ah, no, He has no hand with which to do such a cruel work as that, for He has given both His hands to be nailed to the tree for guilty men! He has neither hand, nor foot, nor heart with which to reject sinners, for all these have been pierced in His death for them! Therefore He cannot cast them out if they come to Him.

Let me ask you another question, What profit would it be to Christ if He did cast you out? If my dear Lord, with the crown of thorns, the pierced side and the wounded hands, were to cast you away, what glory would it bring to Him? If He cast you into Hell, you who have come to Him, what happiness would that bring to Him? If He were to cast you away, you who have sought His face, you who trust His love and His blood, by what conceivable method could that ever render Him the happier or the greater? It cannot be!

What would such a supposition involve? Imagine for a moment that Jesus did cast away one who came to Him. If it were ascertained that one soul came to Christ and yet He had cast him away, what would happen? Why, there are thousands of us who would never preach again! For one, I would have done with the business. If my Lord can cast away a sinner who comes to Him, I cannot, with a clear conscience, go and preach from His Words, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." Moreover, I should feel that if He failed in one promise, He might fail in others! I could not go and preach a possible but doubtful Gospel! I must have, "shalls," and, "wills," from the eternal Throne of God—but if it is not so, our preaching is in vain—and your faith is also in vain.

See what would follow if one soul came to Christ and Christ cast him out. All the saints would lose their confidence in Him. If a man breaks his promise once, it is of no use for him to say, "Well, I am generally truthful." You have caught him false to his word, once, and you will not trust Him again, will you? No! And if our dear Lord, whose every Word is Truth, could break one of His promises only once, He would not be trusted by His people any more—and His Church would lose the faith that is her very life.

Ah, me, and then they would hear of it up in Heaven. And one soul that came to Christ, and was cast away, would stop the music of the harps of Heaven, would dim the luster of the Glory Land, and take away its joy, for it would be whispered among the glorified, "Jesus has broken His promise! He cast away a praying, believing soul! He may break His promise to us—He may drive us out of Heaven!" When they began to praise Him, this one act of His would make a lump come in their throats and they would be unable to sing. They would be thinking of that poor soul that trusted Him and was cast away— how could they sing, "Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood," if they had to add—"But He did not wash all that came to Him, though He promised that He would"?

I do not even like to talk of all that the supposition would involve! It is something so dreadful to me, for they would hear of it in Hell—and they would tell it to one another and an awful glee would take possession of the fiendish hearts of the devil and all his companions! And they would say, "The Christ is not true to His Word! The boasted Savior rejected one who came to Him. He used to receive even harlots—He even let one wash His feet with her tears! And publicans and sinners came and gathered about Him and He spoke to them in tones of love. But here is one—well, he was too vile for the Savior to bless! He was too far gone, Jesus could not restore him! Christ could not cleanse him. He could save little sinners, but not great ones! He could save sinners eighteen hundred years ago. Oh, He made a fine show of them, but His power is now exhausted! He cannot save a sinner now!" Oh, in the halls of Hell, what jests and ridicule would be poured upon that dear name and, I had almost said, justly, if Christ cast out one who came to Him! But, Beloved, that can never be! It is as sure as God's oath, as certain as Jehovah's Being that he who comes to Christ shall in no wise be cast out! I gladly bear my own witness before this assembled throng that—

"I came to Jesus as I was Weary and worn, and sad. I found in Him a resting place, And He has made me glad."

Come, each one of you, and prove the text to be true in your own experience, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake! Amen.