1. Help, Lord. A short, but sweet, suggestive, seasonable, and serviceable
prayer; a kind of angel’s sword, to be turned every way, and to be used on all
occasions. The psalmist sees the extreme danger of his position and therefore
turns to the Lord, whose help is never denied to his servants. Help, Lord is a very useful ejaculation
which we may dart up to heaven on occasions of emergency. As small ships can
sail into harbors which larger vessels cannot enter, so our brief cries and
short petitions may trade with heaven when our soul is wind-bound, and
business-bound, as to longer exercises of devotion, and when the stream of
grace seems at too low an ebb to float a more laborious supplication. For
the godly man ceaseth. The death, departure, or decline of godly men should
be a trumpet-call for more prayer. The present times always appear to be
especially dangerous, because they are nearest to our anxious gaze, and
whatever evils are rife are sure to be observed, while the faults of past ages
are further off, and are more easily overlooked. Yet we expect that in the
latter days, “because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax
cold,” and then we must address ourselves to the churches’ Lord, by whose help
the gates of hell shall be kept from prevailing against us. The faithful
fail. Common honesty is no longer common when common irreligion leads to
universal godlessness. David had his eye on Doeg, and the men of Ziph and
Keilah, and perhaps remembered the murdered priests of Nob, and the many
banished ones who were with him in the cave of Adullam, and wondered where the
state would drift without the anchors of its godly and faithful men. David,
amid the general misrule, did not take to seditious plottings, but to solemn
petitionings.
2. They speak vanity.
They utter what is vain to hear, because of its frivolous, foolish want
of worth; vain to believe, because it was false and lying; vain to
regard, for it lifted up the hearer, filling him with proud conceit.
Compliments and fawning congratulations are hateful to honest men.
3–4. Total
destruction will overwhelm the lovers of flattery and pride, but meanwhile how
they hector and fume! Well did the apostle call them “raging waves of the sea,
foaming out their own shame.” Free-thinkers are generally very free-talkers,
and they are never more at ease than when railing at God’s dominion, and
arrogating to themselves unbounded license. They boastfully cry to God, who
is lord over us? and hear not the hollow voice of the evil one, who cries
from the infernal lake, “I am your lord, and right faithfully do you serve
me.” Note that flattering lips and the tongue that speaketh proud
things are classed together. One generally imagines that flatterers are
such mean parasites, so cringing and fawning, that they cannot be proud; but
the wise will tell you that while all pride is truly meanness, there is in the
very lowest meanness no small degree of pride. None are so detestably
domineering as the little creatures who creep into office by cringing to the
great: those are bad times, indeed, in which these obnoxious beings are
numerous and powerful. No wonder the justice of God in cutting off such
injurious people is matter for a psalm. Men cannot tame the tongues of such
boastful flatterers, but the Lord’s remedy if sharp is sure, and is an
unanswerable answer to their swelling words of vanity.
5. In due
season the Lord will hear his elect ones, who cry day and night to him, and
though he bear long with their oppressors, yet will he avenge them speedily.
Observe that the mere oppression of saints, however silently they bear it, is
in itself a cry to God: Moses was heard at the Red Sea, though he said nothing.
Jesus feels with his people, and their smarts are mighty orators with him.
By-and-by, however, they begin to sigh and express their misery, and
then relief comes post-haste. Nothing moves a father like the cries of his
children. The needy did not dare to speak, and could only sigh in secret, but
the Lord heard, and could rest no longer, but girded on his sword for the
battle. Jesus will come to deliver just when his needy ones sigh as if all hope
had gone forever. Should the afflicted reader be able to lay hold upon the
promise of this verse, let him gratefully fetch a fullness of comfort from it.
He who promises to set us in safety, means thereby preservation on earth, and
eternal salvation in heaven.
6. What a
contrast between the vain words of man, and the pure words of Jehovah. Man’s
words are yea and nay, but the Lord’s promises are yea and amen. For truth,
certainty, holiness, faithfulness, the words of the Lord are pure as
well-refined silver. In the original there is an allusion to the most
severely-purifying process known to the ancients, through which silver was
passed when the greatest possible purity was desired; the dross was all
consumed, and only the bright and precious metal remained; so clear and free
from all alloy of error or unfaithfulness is the book of the words of the Lord.
The Bible has passed through the furnace of persecution, literary criticism,
philosophic doubt, and scientific discovery, and has lost nothing but those
human interpretations which clung to it as alloy to precious ore. What God’s
words are, the words of his children should be. If we would be Godlike in
conversation, we must watch our language, and maintain the strictest purity of
integrity and holiness in all our communications.
7. To fall
into the hands of an evil generation, so as to be polluted by their influence,
is an evil to be dreaded beyond measure; but it is an evil foreseen and provided
for in the text. In life many a saint has lived a hundred years before his age,
unreverenced and misunderstood, and as generations come and go, upon a sudden
the hero is unearthed, and lives in the admiration and love of the excellent of
the earth. It should be our daily prayer that we may rise above our age as the
mountaintops above the clouds. Eternal Spirit, fulfill in us the faithful
saying of this verse! Our faith believes those two assuring words, and cries, Thou
shalt.
8. Here we
return to the fount of bitterness which first made the psalmist run to the
wells of salvation, namely, the prevalence of wickedness. When those in power
are vile, their underlings will be no better. Would to God that the glory and
triumph of our Lord Jesus would encourage us to walk and work on every side; as
like acts upon like, since an exalted sinner encourages sinners, our exalted
Redeemer must surely excite, cheer, and stimulate his saints. Nerved by a sight
of his reigning power we shall meet the evils of the times in the spirit of
holy resolution, and shall the more hopefully pray, “Help, Lord.”
Excerpt from:
The Treasury of David
By Charles H Spurgeon
