Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vols. 13–63

Verse 1. In You, O LORD, do I put my trust. Can we say as much as that? However else this Psalm of David may end, it strikes a grand keynote, that which should be the first indication of our spiritual life—confidence in God. Here is an ancient weather-beaten saint who, in the very midst of the storm, can say, "In You, O Jehovah, do I put my trust." There will the anchor of his soul find a sure hold!

1. Let me never be ashamed. "How can You let me be put to shame after having trusted in You, O my God? I shall be ashamed if You forsake me, if Your promises are not kept to me, O my Lord! Therefore, 'let me never be ashamed.'"

1. Deliver me in Your righteousness. David dares to appeal even to the faithfulness, truth and justice of Jehovah, that He should keep the promise upon which His servant had placed his trust.

2. Bow down Your ear to me. "I am very weak, I am also very unworthy—it will be a great instance of Your Divine condescension if You hear me—yet I cry unto You, 'Bow down Your ear to me.'"

2. Deliver me speedily. We may not set the time for God to answer our petitions, yet may we expect that His sure mercies will be swift mercies when our necessities are very urgent. So the Psalmist pleads, "Lord, come not late to me, lest You come too late to me, for I am in sore distress! My case is urgent, therefore help me now, 'deliver me speedily.'"

2. Be You my strong rock, an house of defense to save me. He remembered Adullam and Engedi and he worked these places into his supplication. A man's prayer should be the index of his life's history. The scenes to which he has been most accustomed should rise up vividly before his spirit when he is at the Throne of Grace. It was so with David—"My God, be You an immutable, immovable, impregnable rock to me and let me dwell in You. Be not merely a refuge for the moment, but be 'a house of defense to save me.'"

3. For You are my rock and my fortress; therefore for Your name's sake lead me, and guide me. David is of a logical turn of mind. Notice the, "therefore," in this verse. What an amazing, "for," there is here! "Be You my strong rock," "for You are my rock." What God is already, we may ask Him to be! What we believe Him to be by faith, we may ask Him to be in our experience. Observe that David's appeal is not in any degree to his own merit, but. "for Your name's sake"—"because I trust in Your name, and if You do not do as You have said, Your great name will suffer dishonor. How can I believe in Your veracity if You do not do for me according to Your promise and Covenant? 'Therefore, for Your name's sake, lead me.' 'Guide me,' too, even when I do not think of Your Presence. Lead me like a child and guide me like a traveler." There are shades of meaning, here, so that there is no redundancy of expression in the words, "Lead me, and guide me." But even if the two words meant the same, it would be quite lawful for the Psalmist to repeat the prayer, since he felt his need of leading and guiding to be so great. "Lord, I am so foolish, and the way is so difficult, 'therefore, for Your name's sake, lead me, and guide me.'"

4. Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me: for You are my strength. "Lord, my enemies have entangled me! Before I was aware of it, I was taken in the meshes of their net—will You not pull me out, O Lord? It will need a strong pull, but then, 'You are my strength.' 'Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me: for You are my strength.'" Sometimes our strength is crippled and we are baffled by the net in which we are enclosed. We feel ourselves hampered. We cannot use the strength we have, but God's strength is always available. There seems to me to be a very blessed turn in the expression here used—"Pull me out of the net: for You are my strength."

5. Into Your hands I commit my spirit. You notice that this Psalm is dedicated to the chief musician. I have studied these Psalms, not only by the hour, and by the day, but sometimes by the month, together. Some of these Psalms have been the pillow for my head at night. Others of them, like wafers made of honey, have lain in my mouth till I have sucked out of them their Divine sweetness. I have often noticed that when one of these sacred songs is dedicated to the chief musician, The Chief Musician generally appears somewhere in the Psalm—He from whom comes all the music that ever makes bleeding hearts, glad, usually shows some traces of Himself within the Psalm itself! In this instance, the living words of David were the dying words of David's Lord—"Into Your hands I commend My spirit." What David did and what the Lord Jesus Christ did, let us do, and do it every day—let us commit our spirit into the hands of our God.

5, 6. You have redeemed me, O LORD God of Truth, I have hated them that regard lying vanities: but I trust in the LORD. Men are sure to have some kind of trust or other on which they rely. In David's day some trusted to false gods, others relied upon their own strength. The Psalmist does not speak in soft tones concerning these people, but he says, "I could not bear them. 'I have hated them that regard lying vanities.' I would not come into their secret, or have any connection with them. I was astonished at them, that they should turn away from God! But as for myself, 'I trust in Jehovah.'" Look how he comes back to the note with which he started—"In You, O Jehovah, do I put my trust"—and now he repeats it, "I trust in Jehovah." It is an unfashionable thing—many will not do it—yet David says, "I trust in Jehovah," as if he dared to stand alone and did not mind how singular he seemed to be.

7. I will be glad and rejoice in Your mercy. What a grand faith! Should there not, sometimes, be the sounding of the cymbals even in the midst of our supplications? Though we must often put on sackcloth, yet we must lift up our song of praise whenever we can—"'I will be glad and rejoice'—there shall be a reduplication of my delight—'I will be glad and rejoice in Your mercy.'"

7. For You have considered my trouble. "You did not send it without due consideration. You weighed it and now You look upon me and You study my trouble, You know all about it." You know what is meant by human consideration, but how wonderful must Divine consideration be! When a single glance suffices for Jehovah to know all that is transpiring in the whole universe, what must His consideration be! "You have considered my trouble."

7. You have known my soul in adversities. "When others did not know me, You did. You were familiar with me and sympathetic towards me, especially in the day of adversity. 'You have known my soul.'" God knows His own children even when they are in rags and when their faces are stained with tears, and their spirits are depressed almost to despair— "You have known my soul in adversities."

8. And have not shut me up into the hand of the enemy. "No. I may get into the enemy's prison, but there is no bar to it. 'You have not shut me up.' I may seem to get into my enemy's hand, but he cannot shut that hand." Truly, it must be so because David had already put his soul into the hands of God—"Into Your hands I commit my spirit." How, then, could he be shut up in the hands of the enemy?

8. You have set my feet in a large room—

"Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage."

Wherever the child of God is when his faith is in active exercise, his feet are in a large room—by faith he walks at liberty!

9. Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am in trouble. In this short sentence of four words—"I am in trouble"— David gives the text of which the next few verses are a kind of sermon with divisions and subdivisions.

9. My eyes are consumed with grief. "My eyes seem burnt up with scalding tears." The salt of our tears wears out the very strength of our life. "My eyes are consumed with grief."—

9. Yes, my soul and my belly. Or, "body." The inward part of my being seems washed away with the deluge of my tears."

10. For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing. Better spend them in sighing than in sinning! Yet it is a sad case when we seem to measure our days by the bars of our grief.

10. My strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones are consumed. Now he sees to the bottom of his sorrow— "My strength fails because of my iniquity." We can bear those sorrows which have no connection with our sins, but, alas, where are they to be found? It may be that David's great sin seemed to him to lie at the very root of all his grief.

11. I was a reproach among all my enemies. They had found something to fling at him and they were delighted to throw it with all their malicious force! "I was a reproach among all my enemies"—

11. But especially among my neighbors. Those that are nearest can stab the sharpest. Those who knew David the best endeavored to find some silly tale to use against him.

11. And a fear to my acquaintance: they that did see me outside, fled from me. This Psalm may have been written after Absalom's rebellion, when Shimei cursed the king, and when everybody seemed to be forsaking him. Then was David brought into a low estate, indeed.

12. I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel. This was the same David who slew the Philistine giant! This was the great deliverer of his country, yet the people had forgotten all that. Earthly popularity is the most fleeting thing under Heaven. The world is a hard and cruel master—it forgets its servants when they grow old—it has nothing good to say of them when there is nothing further to be got out of them. So David laments, "I am like a broken vessel"—a potsherd that can hold nothing and is flung away upon a dunghill.

13. For I have heard the slander of many. To have one slanderer attacking your character is bad enough, but to have many such cruel enemies about you—to have a whole brood of Hell's hornets, as it were, stinging you—oh, what misery is this! You who, happily, have never experienced this torture, cannot imagine what agony it causes. I hope you may never know it.

13, 14. Fear was on every side: while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life. But I trusted in You, O LORD. Here he is back on the old Rock, and rejoicing as his feet stand once more on this firm foundation—"I trusted in you, O Jehovah."

14, 16. I said, You are my God. My times are in Your hand. "My enemies cannot do anything against me without Your permission." Divine Providence is a downy pillow for an aching head, a blessed salve for the sharpest pain. He who can feel that his times are in the hand of God need not tremble at anything that is in the hand of man!

15, 16. Deliver me from the hand of my enemies, and from them that persecute me. Make Your face to shine upon Your servant: save me for Your mercies' sake. "If Your face shines upon me, Lord, they may look as black as they please. If You will but deliver me, I care not how cruelly they persecute me. If You will save me, who can destroy me?" O you who are in trouble at this time, hasten to your God! Where should the little bird fly when pursued by the hawk, but to its shelter in the rock? Where can you go, O sheep of Christ's flock, but to your Shepherd?

17. Let me not be ashamed, O LORD; for I have called upon You: let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave. There is something of the harshness of the old dispensation about that prayer, so we will turn it into a prophecy and say, "The wicked shall be ashamed—they shall be silent in the grave."

18. 19. Let the lying lips be put to silence, which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous. Oh how great is Your goodness which You have laid up for them that fear You. Is not that a blessed expression to be used by the man who said that his life was spent with grief and his years with sighing?

19. Which You have worked for them that trust in You before the sons of men! Not only has the Lord abundant goodness stored up for His children, but His goodness is brought out for others to see and for His people to feed upon even in the presence of their enemies!

20. You shall hide them in the secret of Your Presence from the pride of man: You shall keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues. They shall not be wounded by all the malice of their adversaries—they shall be preserved in the King's royal pavilion.

21-23. Blessed be the LORD for He has showed me His marvelous kindness in a strong city. For I said in my haste, I am cut offfrom before Your eyes: nevertheless You heard the voice of my supplications when I cried unto You. O love the LORD, all you His saints. See what a fountain of happiness there is in the Psalmist's heart? He longs for all the saints to love the

23, 24. For the LORD preserves the faithful, and plentifully rewards the proud doer. Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, all you that hope in the LORD. In this Psalm we have heard the wail of the sackbut and the clashing of the cymbals—but we finish with the blast of the silver trumpets!